


Out of the Woods

by elo_elo



Series: The Woods [4]
Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Drug Use, Emphasis on Comfort, Established Relationship, Eventual Smut, F/M, Falling In Love Again, Fluff and Smut, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide attempt, Making Up, Mental Health Issues, Mutual Pining, Oral Sex, Past Abuse, Past Sexual Assault, Recreational Drug Use, Slow Burn, Smut, Suicidal Thoughts, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, Will add more tags as the chapters progress, hopefully, im making up for the clearing lol, im really bad at that, theres a lot of drug use in this u guys, trying to resolve all the wild shit i set up in way through the woods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2020-08-23 21:44:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 47
Words: 102,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20233282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elo_elo/pseuds/elo_elo
Summary: Joni and Sebastian are both living in Zuzu, their paths on a collision course. Can they fall in love again?This is the third (or I guess, technically, fourth) installment of The Woods series. It likely won't make much sense without reading the others first!





	1. Fucked*

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joni's first month in the city has gone well, but there's still a hole in her heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What up. Let’s get these two back together.

She can’t help but compare him to Sebastian. Her brain drifts naturally in that direction. Almost all the time these days. Not like there’s really all that much to compare really. As far as fucking goes, they’re apples to oranges. This guy might not even be fruit.

He’d looked so promising, hovering over produce at the bodega down the block, a six-pack of Southpaw tucked under his arm. Dressed well but not too well. Good haircut, strong shoulders. He looks almost nothing like Sebastian which is, honestly, her only set of criteria these days. But man, as far as fucking goes, they’re not even playing the same sport, much less in the same league.

He did a few cursory passes over her clit and then, apparently satisfied that Joni was at least wet enough to fuck, flipped her onto all fours where he’s been pounding her into the mattress for the past ten minutes. Miraculously hitting her cervix with each uncoordinated thrust, but missing her clit entirely.

Joni doesn’t even try to get herself off, decides to rest her head against her pillow instead, trying to occupy her mind with something else, anything else. She checks between her legs every so often to make sure he hasn’t slipped the condom off or something equally nefarious. But after a while, he finds his rhythm and Joni’s thoughts overtake her. They’re precise, completely out of her control, tracking only Sebastian’s scent. Traitors. No matter how hard she tries to shut her body down, every touch wakes it back up and reminds her harshly and suddenly of the man who evacuated himself from her life. Her heart aches. Yoba, this is why she hasn’t fucked in months.

Each clumsy, accidental brush of his hand reminds her of the way Sebastian’s fingers would walk down her spin as they fucked, his mouth hot on her neck. The memories of him are so vivid that when this guy finally finishes, she’s nearly in tears. He mistakes the way she’s whimpering for pleasure, wearing a self-congratulatory smile as he tucks himself back into his pants. He tosses the condom into the trashcan by her bed without even bothering to tie it off and when the light from the rickety wall of windows catches on him Joni finds a dozen other things she doesn’t like about him.

Joni shoos him out of the apartment, only letting him stop to write his number down on the pad by their phone because she’s not in the mood for confrontation. She shuts the door firmly and presses her forehead against the old wood, listening as his footsteps fade further and further down the hall. She pushes herself off the door and runs her fingers across her scalp. “Fucking hell.”

The kitchen is long and narrow. A clear afterthought built long after the construction of the rest of the building. Its single narrow window makes it the darkest room in an apartment solely held to the whims of the sun. With Leah babying a kettle on the stove, the room is almost too narrow for them both to be inside at once. Joni slips behind her, heading for the fridge. She scans the contents before settling on a lone apple on the second shelf. When she closes the fridge door, Leah is looking back at her, eyebrow raised, just the hint of a mocking grin on her lips. “Don’t even.”

She smiles, laughing softly. “Sure, sure. Just tell me. Was it as bad as it sounded?”

Joni hefts herself up onto the countertop and starts in on the apple. “Were you listening to me fuck?”

Leah shrugs, still smiling. “Sure. Why not?”

“Gross, quit.”

Leah laughs again, the sound echoing pleasantly along the apartment’s rickety, vaulted ceilings. She pours herself some tea. “So?”

Joni sighs, discarding her half-eaten apple in the sink. “Probably worse than it sounded honestly. I can put on an alright show if I need to.” She touches her lips, suddenly aware of how raw they feel. “I don’t think he kissed me. Like even once.” She glances up at Leah. “How fucking weird is that?”

“Did you want him to kiss you?”

“Not especially.” 

“Well, it’s definitely a statement,” Leah says, taking a long sip of her tea. The light spilling in from the window makes her look enveloped in flame, her hair a livid red loose around her shoulders.

Joni’s lips feel tender now and the touch of her own fingers to them fills her with longing. She can’t stand to be inside anymore, the scent of her latest conquest’s cologne still lingering in the air. “You wanna go up?”

Leah glances out the window. It’s a clear evening. Stars scattered across the darkening sky, a pale blue, the gold of the sun going pink at the horizon line. “Why not?”

The rooftop covers half the top of the building, the other atrium apartments taking up the rest of the space. The floor is an uneven concrete, more often than not dotted with puddles, rusty discoloration swirling along the remaining dry surfaces, ghosts of older flooding. Someone put an old couch on one end of the rooftop, so worn out it’s practically sinking into the ground, a rotating crowd of empty liquor bottles, beer cans, and cigarette butts paying tribute to the ancient piece of furniture. On the other end, a rickety grill. It’s smoking now, one of their neighbors balancing a plate of burgers in one hand as she tries to wrestle with the burning coals with the other.

Leah waves, but steers them away from the grill. She’s the kind of too cool girl that Joni would expect to find at one of Beth’s parties. Head half-shaved, long chunky earrings hanging so low they almost reach her collarbone. She’s a sculptor, Joni thinks. Or maybe a tattoo artist. She and Leah have been quietly and intermittently fucking since they moved in. Joni knows better than to ask about it, no matter how badly she wants to tease her about this girl’s resemblance to Emily.

Joni’s spot is on the far end of the rooftop. A sea of pots that she’s been babying for the month she’s been here, trying to get them used to the city’s occasional smog and frequent rainstorms. She’s been mostly successful, the flowers blooming so vividly you can see them from the street. Her neighbors have, for the most part, left the little sanctuary alone. But one morning she found a guy from downstairs sitting in front of her big pot of dahlias, almost rapt. _This is so beautiful, _he’d said to her, _I’ve never seen anything like this. _

Leah plops down on the far edge, her back against the squat little wall that keeps the roof contained. She pulls out a few rolling papers and nods toward Joni. “If I roll a joint, you have to smoke most of it.” Joni quirks an eyebrow. “I’m heading out in a few.”

“Oh yeah?” Joni sits down cross-legged beside her, running her fingers along the veiny leaves of the peonies in the pot next to her.

“Picked up a late shift at the restaurant,” Leah replies, taking a long toke of the joint and passing it over.

“Hell.” The weed here isn’t as good as Emily’s, but it does the job. Joni lays her head on the top of the wall, resting on her forearms like a tired dog. The city spreads thrumming out beneath her. 

“Yeah, no kidding. You got an early morning tomorrow, yeah?”

Joni nods. “At the bookstore till three.”

“Let’s meet up after. Get dinner somewhere. Maybe that new Chinese place on fourth.”

Joni passes the joint back. “Sounds good.” The night glitters. It wasn’t really all that long ago that being up this high would have incited inside of her a dark urge to go tumbling to the pavement. She used to imagine the way her bones would sound as they shattered, the way blood would pour out of her mouth as she took her last, rattling breaths. It was satisfying then, to imagine her ultimate demise, so complete that nothing of her body would even be recognizable. The idea makes her vaguely nauseous now. Now, all she wants to do is go back inside to feed Goose and crawl into bed. Progress, surely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! Especially if you just came from The Clearing. I really put y'all through the ringer.


	2. Peony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian didn't get Joni back and no one seems to be able to let him forget it, including himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m traveling which means I have ample free time but I’m sick which could mean I’ll be spending most of that trying to sleep. So either expect a couple more updates from me or nothing at all for a couple of days.

“I like that,” she says, reaching out to him. He feels nothing until her fingers land gently on his ribs. Then all the color drains out of his face. “It’s really pretty. What kind of flower is that?”

He recoils from her, brushing her fingers off him. _It’s not for you_, he wants to say. Instead, he rolls off the bed, searching for his jeans. “It’s a peony,” he says, pulling his jeans over his hips.

“Do you like peonies.”

“I _love _them.”

She looks around the room. “You don’t really seem like much of a plant guy. No offense.”

“Don’t have time,” he grunts, then softens his tone, “with work and all, you know.” She smiles, pulling her crossed legs a little closer to her body. The metallic light from outside filters over her bare skin. She’s beautiful and smart and funny. When they’d met at the coffee shops he goes to every morning before work, she’d made him laugh so hard his sides ached.

And despite all that he is painfully and thoroughly uninterested in her. He thought fucking might set his dumbass heart straight, but it’s only made the feeling of longing inside of him more biting. Sebastian pulls the curtains roughly over his tall bedroom window. Joni always hated that. Never could stand to have the shades drawn. Suffered in the summer heat because she couldn’t bear to cover a window with an air-conditioning unit. Sebastian’s chest tightens. “I had a really nice time.” Sebastian pauses, then looks back over his shoulder at her, trying to force a smile. She looks at him through her eyelashes. “I haven’t cum like that in…well, I’ve never cum like that.” She laughs. “You’re talented.”

Sebastian laughs back, a little weakly. “I had fun too. You’re great.” He takes a deep breath, shoring himself up. “So, uh, can I call you a taxi?”

Her face falls a little but, to her credit, she manages to keep smiling. “Is this your way of telling me I’m not staying the night?”

He shrugs, a little sheepish. “Sorry, I…have an early morning tomorrow.”

“Well,” she says, pulling her discarded shirt back over her head, “at least you’re polite.”

The bathroom is all cool, dark tile. It makes him feel like a tiny bug tucked quietly into a lonely, reflective cocoon. A perfect darkness. In the hollow echo of the shower, his thoughts are expansive. It’s been a month since he drove back to Pelican Town that night. 34 days actually. Not that he’s counting. Yoba, what a fucking nightmare. One thoroughly of his own making.

In high school, Shane had played gridball. He’d been a beast, bulky and strong and that night on Joni’s porch Shane had been all of those things again. They'd both regressed. The tension between them had gotten so thick, so unbearable that Sebastian had cleared off the porch, brushing roughly past Shane. He’d nearly made it to his bike when Shane called out from the porch step. “You didn’t fucking deserve her!”

Sebastian froze, hands curling into fists. That old temper rose up so fast in him again. Primordial almost. He’d felt, all at once, like the teenager who’d broken his knuckles smashing them into a wall, who’d bloodied the nose of any son of a bitch who dared look at him the wrong way. He spins on his heel. “You have a lot of fucking nerve saying shit like that after the last few years, Shane.”

Shane puffed out his chest. “Fuck you, dude. Been sober almost a year.”

“Fucking congratulations, Shane. I don’t give a shit.” Sebastian yanks his helmet from his seat, ready to just get the fuck out of there when something occurs to him. That familiar way he’s talking about Joni. He flips back to Shane. “So what? Did you guys fuck or something?”

“Maybe we did. Not that it’s any of your fucking business.” The pain in his chest was indescribable. Sebastian left after that, without another word. If he hadn’t, he might’ve pummeled Shane into the dirt. Shane might have pummeled him right back.

Sebastian presses his head against the cool tile, lets the steam rise up around him. That had been the longest ride of his life. Back to Zuzu. His thoughts churning so violently he’d had trouble steering his bike. When he got back to his apartment he was so chilled and wind-whipped that he’d collapsed on his couch. Slept for almost a full day. He shuts the water off and lets the cold creep back in. Water drips off his hair in a steady rhythm. 

“You know what I had to do this morning?” Sebastian grunts as the needle rolls over the tender muscle of his bicep. He’s had a couple beers and they’re roiling in his empty stomach. The pain’s a good distraction. On multiple levels. For multiple things. 

“What did you have to do?”

“Naked chick,” Tim says, re-upping the ink.

“Lots of people get naked chicks tattooed, dude.”

“Dressed as a clown.”

“Oh,” Sebastian holds up a hand to stop Tim, then shifts to a more comfortable position in the chair. “Wait, how can she be both naked and dressed like-“

“Huge titties,” Tim interrupts, “_Huge. _Pussy just out there. Never thought I’d have to do the fine details of fucking pussy lips. And then, just like clown shoes, man, big red nose, one of those floppy ass polka-dotted hats. Had me do it in color too. Weird pastels.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Think you’d fuck a clown?” Tim never looks up from his work, face as stoic as if they were talking about their dinner plans. Sebastian just looks at him. “Oh come on, what if she was like a really hot clown?”

“Man, I can say with total honesty,” Sebastian grunts when Tim rolls over another sensitive spot, “that I have never once thought about whether I’d fuck a clown.”

“Well, think about it now.”

Sebastian lets his eyes fall closed. “What are you trying to do, dude?”

“Distracting you,” he says, tongue caught in his teeth in concentration. “Is it working?”

“Sure, but why are you trying to distract me?”

Tim punches him on the skin just above the unfinished tattoo, sending Sebastian howling to the far end of the chair. “Trying to get you to stop moping.”

Sebastian frowns, shooting Tim a hard look before settling back into the chair. “Who says I’m moping?”

“You’re having me tattoo a fucking skull on your arm, dude.” It _is _a skull. Sort of. Its outline drips like a gonzo art piece, toeing the line between realism and full comic, thick and inky. He’s hoping it’ll make people talk to him less at work. There’s a very short list these days of people who don’t make his skull start pounding at the office. If starting out at the place had been hard, coming back after his two weeks of self-imposed exile is edging on impossible. Yoba, it has been a hell of a two weeks too. His place looked like a train hit it when Beth finally found him after ten days, threatening to call the cops through the door. A rare threat, considering she’d usually rather die than let the pigs anywhere near her. He’d had to kick aside half a dozen empty takeout boxes to answer the door and she told him he’d looked paler than death. Like a junkie. 

Beth brought him back to life. Or some approximation of it. Dragged him out to art exhibitions and shitty punk shows that made him smile again, that made him feel a little less like he’d kamikaze-ed his whole life. He’d even managed to quietly admit to Aaron, when they went out for cocktails a few days before his planned restart date, that he hadn’t even seen Joni, that they hadn't talked. “I’m fine,” Sebastian tells Tim, settling back to let him finish. The whirring of the tattoo gun a pleasant hum between his ears.

“Whatever you say, man, whatever you say.”

Sebastian’s starting to suspect that Aaron only actually knows one restaurant, but as the three of them duck through the narrow glass door, Tim grins and claps his hands. “I love this place!” And now Sebastian feels weirdly out of the loop.

They are a strange bunch, sitting at this round table. None of them look like they should be friends, but the conversation flows easily forward. At least Sebastian thinks it does. He’s been zoning out for a good fifteen minutes, picking at his broccoli beef. He startles at the sound of his name and looks up to see Tim leveling his fork at him. “He this gloomy at work?”

“Cut it out,” Sebastian says, sullenly.

“Gloomier, probably.”

“Oh not you too, fucking shit.”

“Probably thinking about Joni Mitchell.” Sebastian shoots Tim a warning look that he easily ignores, stuffing his face with fried rice.

Aaron frowns and looks between the two of them. “Joni Mitchell?” Then it dawns on him. “Oh, _oh!_” He turns to Sebastian. “That so?”

“Listen, do me a favor and drop the damn-“

“I’m surprised he’s not throttling me across the table, to be honest.”

Aaron quirks an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’re the shitty friend who talked him into leaving the woman he loved.”

“The very one.”

Aaron tuts at him. “Shame on you.”

“Can we just-“

“You hear she’s back in town? Lives here now.”

Aaron widens his eyes and looks over at Sebastian. “No I did not.”

Sebastian shuts his eyes. “Can we please talk about something else? _Anything _else?” 

“Joni lives here? Do you know where?”

“No,” Sebastian says, opening his eyes, kneading his temples, “no I do not and I don’t intend to fucking invade her privacy to try to find out.”

“You have to talk to her.” Aaron turns to Tim. “He has to talk to her.”

Tim looks slowly over at Sebastian. “Does seem like the universe wants you too.”

“Yeah? Well I think the universe rendered its verdict when I showed up to her empty house and was greeted by some scum bag from my high school” “

Bullshit.” Aaron says, sipping his beer. 

Sebastian shakes his head. “Besides,” he says, sighing “I don’t know where she lives. I don’t even have her number.”

“You could find out.” Tim offers.

“You could definitely find out” Aaron agrees. Sebastian shakes his head. “You literally have the entire internet at your disposal. You’re a fucking computer god.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“You know damn well what I’m suggesting.”

“I’m not going to do that.”

“You should do that.”

“I’m _not _going to do that.” He says, a little loud, angry enough to quiet them both. “If we’re supposed to be together, it’ll happen and I'm not about to invade her privacy to try and _make _it happen. That's a very fucking bad look.” 

“And that’s it?” Tim asks, chewing with his mouth open.

Aaron tents his fingers “You’re such a defeatist.”

Sebastian scrapes his fingers through his hair. “Can we pay?! Fucking shit. I just want to get home.”

Aaron smiles, chewing on his straw. “Touchy.” Sebastian glowers at him, lighting a cigarette. In the quiet of his own thoughts, he does the math on the ethics of trying to find her phone number that way. It comes up short. He considers it a second time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading guys <3


	3. Taut

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ♪reunited♫. Well, sort of.

Joni sees Sebastian through the hazy front windows and she’s sure it’s a dream. She moves a little closer to the register, trying to see past the dense stacks of books. Hoping she’s wrong, maybe a little sleep-deprived. Setting the stack of books she’s been organizing down on the back counter, she squints, then blinks, trying to morph him into someone else. Hoping he’s just another handsome, dark-haired boy in the city. He is, after all, wearing clothes she’s never seen him in, can’t really imagine him in. Crisp, dark jeans. Well-tailored, not a tear in sight. He’s tucked a striped button-down into them, so crisp it looks freshly ironed. But as she watches him scratch nervously at his neck and ash his cigarette with a flick onto the chilly sidewalk, Joni knows, without a doubt, that it’s him. Yoba, it’s really fucking him. Here at her work like a ghost. Or maybe a dream. Joni shuts her eyes tightly, then opens them one by one. Sebastian’s still there, hands in his pockets now, peering lazily through the front windows. The sharp line of his aquiline nose defined by the shadow of the shop’s awning. Fuck. _Fuck. _She lays her palms on the stack, feeling for the fine raised print of the title. Anything to keep herself grounded. The bell on the door rings, a rush of cool air coming in from outside, and Joni’s heart starts to pound. “You okay?” Joni jumps at the light pressure of Lydia’s hand on her shoulder, but the older woman holds fast. The shop comes into sharp focus. Sebastian has disappeared into the stacks, but she can feel his energy, feel him moving closer and closer to the back counter. The sweater Joni wore to work is suddenly chafing. The shop, cool in the way that only old buildings filled with old books can be, is suddenly boiling. Lydia shakes her lightly by the shoulder. Joni looks down at her hand, her brain fizzling. Lydia’s hands are the only thing about her that truly reveal her age. The veins blue and delicate under her thin, papery skin. “Hello?”

Joni lets out a ragged, animal breath. “I’m taking my lunch.”

She barely makes it to the storeroom, feeling with each step like she might collapse or, maybe worse, throw up. The back of the shop is thick with dust, the pleasantly musty smell of well-loved books stronger here and it envelops her.

Joni shuts the storeroom’s door and presses her back hard to it, shoring it up.. The room is cluttered like the rest of the shop. An old card table warping under the weight of stacks and stacks of paperwork. An ancient coffee machine in the corner that always smells vaguely like mildew. Of course, he would come here. Thousands of bookstores in the city and _of course _this would be the one he would decide to browse on what? His lunch break? It dawns on her how little she knows about his life now. She slumps down onto one of the folding chairs around the table. A few papers flutter away from her, scattering dust. Joni holds her head in her hands and tries to breathe.

She has no idea how much time has passed when Lydia slips into the room. Her dark hair is pulled into a sleep updo, secured with a jeweled pin. She adjusts the broach decorating the front of her silk shirt and clears her throat. “Joni?”

“Yes?” Joni gulps, looking up. She runs her hands through her hair on impulse, her loose curls tangling around her knuckles.

“Whoever he was, he’s gone now.”

The whole city is off-kilter when Joni leaves work. She does her best to ignore it, stopping at the bodega on the corner by the shop to buy a joja cola. But she can’t drink it. Her stomach refuses to cooperate. Joni tosses the can mostly full into a nearby trashcan. Her head feels tight, heavy like she’s lost in a fog. Every light is too bright, each accidental touch as she winds through the rush hour crowd is nearly painful.

The train briefly soothes her. That familiar smell of floor cleaner and fast food, the way it rocks back and forth on the track. But even that is short-lived and terror soon wells up in her chest again, this time more articulated, darker. Joni bends over, resting her head heavily on her knees, letting her arms dangle limp beside her shins. Her heart is beating in her palms, her throat, the backs of her knees. And then comes the certainty, that sinister certainty, that death has her in its grip, that this train is the last thing she’ll ever see.

Joni straightens up so suddenly, the woman beside her startles. The train wobbles and Joni grasps desperately for the pole. The metal too cold, too painful on her bare skin. It’s enough. It’s too much.

Joni stumbles off the train at the next stop, no idea where the fuck she even is and hurries up the stairs, gripping the railing so tightly it cuts into her palm.

The platform is eerily empty. It’s one of the raised platforms, giving it a feeling of strange isolation, cutting through the city at a bias. All pale concrete and no adornment. . Joni just needs to sit, just needs to feel something solid beneath her. Her knees slowly give, the ground rising up to meet her, when his hands catch her in the middle, nearly knocking the air from her as they pull her upward. “Joni.” _No, no, no. _She wrenches away from him. “Joni!” He smells like cigarettes, like soap. She stumbles backward, landing hard on her shins. Sebastian crouches down, facing her. His shirt is half untucked, the top two buttons undone. The messenger bag she’d seen earlier is discarded in a heap beside him. “_Joni._”

They are alone on the platform, the energy pulsing between them even more palpable with no one else to dilute it. Joni watches him, wheezing, fingers grasping uselessly at the concrete. The sun slips quickly out of sight and the platform’s lights blink on one by one until they are bathed in light. “Can I touch you?”

Joni’s eyes widen. “What?” He’s closer than she remembers him being.

“Can I…” He shakes his head, apparently, deciding, and takes her hands in his. “Breathe,” He says, squeezing her fingers. “Take a breath.” His touch startles her, but she squeezes back on instinct. Finally, _finally. _Her lungs are on fire, the platform wobbling, the ground rolling like a ship on rough seas. He squeezes again. “Just take a deep breath, Joni, please. I’m here. I’m here. You’re okay.” _Finally. _Her body exhales. _Where have you been? It’s been so long._

They breathe together slowly, Sebastian setting the pace, his thumbs rubbing soft circles on her palms. She hangs her head, letting him hold her up until the world rights itself again. Until the terror uncoils enough for her to breathe.

When her ears have stopped roaring, her muscles limp and pliable, her thinking brain reemerges and she recoils from him. The air sharpens. Joni stands, letting go of his hands like they disgust her. She smooths her jean skirt, fingers skimming the middle of her thighs, and backs up until she can see all of him. “What are you doing here?”

Sebastian looks surprised by the question. She can see the gears spring to life behind his dark eyes. “I just saw you on the train. I swear to god. I didn’t…I didn’t…” She watches him lose steam. “_Joni._” It sounds like begging, like he’s barely containing the torrent of all he wants to say to her. Yoba, he looks good. Despite everything. All that sinewy muscle, that flash of dark hair. She can imagine his body releasing under her touch and she wants to curl up in the small of him. To let those strong arms hold her like they seem so eager to. Like no time has passed, like nothing at all has happened between them.

Every cell in her body is screaming. Each one for something different. She grasps uselessly at her sweater, trying to pull it tighter around her, trying to disappear inside of it. “I need to find a payphone.”

Sebastian swallows hard. “There’s one outside the platform.” She nods stiffly. He makes a move toward her, aborting when she stiffens. “I can take you home.” She can hear fear in his voice. It makes him sound young. “Or you can come back to my place.” He glances back behind him. “It’s not far from here. Just a few blocks. I can get you some water. You can lay down for a while and when you’re feeling be-“

“Where’s the payphone?” Sebastian flinches. He purses his lips and nods behind him. Joni hurries in the direction he’s pointed. He follows and she doesn’t stop him, letting him walk a few paces behind her.

She glances back before she picks up the phone, telling him silently to keep his distance. He does, lighting a cigarette and averting his gaze. Joni doesn’t have enough money to make the call. Her first paycheck isn’t for another week and Shane’s rent went in its entirety to the security deposit on the new place, whatever’s left stowed away for food. But Joni doesn’t know what else to do, so she turns her back on Sebastian and pretends to make a call. The world is still a little wobbly, but she’s pretty sure she can make it home on her own. Now that she’s out in the fresh air, she knows vaguely where she is. The new apartment is, tops, twenty blocks away. A little exercise couldn’t hurt. Joni puts the phone back in the receiver and turns to face Sebastian. He takes a couple steps toward her, ashing the cigarette. “Leah’s coming to get me.” She straightens her shoulders. “A few blocks away.” The night is suddenly so cold. The cacophony of night birds and the bare-legged girls passing them on the sidewalk the only clues that it’s even spring.

Sebastian nods, looking a little distant. “Sure, sure. That’s good.” He clears his throat, hands stiffly in his pockets. “You look good.”

Joni scoffs, brushing back her hair. “Yeah, sure.”

“No, I mean it.” She can’t fight the slight smile that appears on her lips, can’t deny she wants to stay here with him, let him walk her home. Silence hangs thick and expectant between them and Joni’s about to turn and bolt when Sebastian clicks his tongue. He’s suddenly a hummingbird of movement, digging around in the messenger bag now slung across his chest. He tears a scrap of paper from a notebook, clicking his pen against his thigh. “Here,” he says, holding the paper out for her, “it’s my um, my number. Just in case you ever,” he shrugs, “you know.”

Joni hesitates, then quickly grabs it, stuffing it into her bag. “Thanks.” She turns quickly on her heel, practically running in the opposite direction. She can feel his gaze on her back.

The sculptor Leah’s fucking recommended the place. She’d said it was the best Chinese in town, but Joni couldn’t care less today. She just wants something fried, some place where she doesn’t have to look at the menu. Her brain is still buzzing and she doesn’t have the focus for it. Her fingers feels mashed together, unyielding and stiff. She’s bouncing her knees so hard that the soy sauce bottle is rippling. Leah’s eyeing her carefully over their pot of steaming tea. Joni can tell she’s plotting her next move. Her first was to bring them here. “So,” she says quietly,” do you think he was the trigger for the panic attack then?”

“I don’t know.” Joni feels too raw for this conversation, but she’s too whipped up to try and pivot either. “But he…he helped. Like he always used to.” Joni starts to cry. Hard. Big, loud tears, her chest heaving. She’s crushing Leah’s fingers, her other hand holding tightly onto the plasticky tablecloth. An old man pokes his head out of the kitchen to find the source of the sound, but quickly retreats back behind the thick, plastic curtain. “I didn’t think seeing him would be like this.” She wipes furiously at her cheeks. “I didn’t think I would want to be back with him so badly.”

“So be with him.”

“He’s the one who left me!” She says, a little too loud.

“I know.”

“He broke my heart!”

“I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading guys <3.


	4. Landline

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With work making him feel vulnerable, Sebastian is called back to the Pelican Town.

He’d felt, in that moment, like a man come back to life. Like all he’d needed to realize he’d been a dead man walking was the touch of her fingers on his skin. She’d woken something vital back up in him, something he’d practically forgotten. Desire or longing or, shit, probably love. And then, just as quickly, the feeling collapsed. He’d never felt so impotent in his life. Useless in every sense of the word. Yoba, she’d been petrified. Shaking and stiff like she’d been that night after Elliot first touched her. So afraid that she’d nearly fallen into him when he reached out to her, her center of balance off and spinning. And, Yoba, she’d been so wary of him once the dust cleared. Shaking him off, practically recoiling from him. It had been freshly heartbreaking. A new wound to lick. He’d been so completely taken off guard in every single way that he hadn’t even stopped to think what had set her off in the first place. Though that particular line of thinking had kept him up the better part of that night, mind flipping through possibilities, each more sinister than the next. When he’d finally admitted defeat and went out to make himself a pot of coffee, his apartment seemed almost warped. Emptier than ever. He wished, more than anything else in the world, that he’d asked for her phone number. That he’d _insisted. _

What a strange day that had been, Yoba. A long one at work that had left him feeling hollow and vaguely under the weather. Sebastian had bought a Joja cola from the bodega down the way and was nursing it on his empty stomach when a woman got on at the next stop, slumping a little in her seat. He’d gotten so used to imagining her, to trying to, however pathetically, place her somewhere in his new life in the city, that it had taken him nearly a full ten minutes to realize that the woman he was staring at on the train was, in fact, Joni. There in the flesh. He’d held his breath, thoughts spinning. He was trying to figure out the best way to make his approach when, like she’d read his mind, Joni bolted from her seat. It was only then that he’d noticed that she’d been crying, noticed the way her fingers shook as she clung to the poles to try and make her exit. Following her had seemed like the most natural thing in the world, the pull of her gravity so intense that he was almost surprised when the rest of the train didn’t just pile out after her too. And, Yoba, the level of relief that coursed through him when he was there to catch her as she stumbled was so intense he can still feel it. 

It had been less than ideal after that. But it _had _confirmed a few things. That the flash of the girl he’d seen at the bookstore’s back counter had, in fact, been Joni and not just his desperate imagination. But more importantly, he knew now the full depth of her anger, of just how much he’d hurt her. It should have been obvious. He should have known. It still shocked him, still cut painfully through him.

At least she’d been looking better than the last time he’d seen her. Healthier, a little stronger. That alone had soothed some of the darker fears he’d been holding onto for the past few months and he’d wondered how much worse he must have looked to her than the last time she’d seen him.

Sebastian scrapes his hair back with his fingers and checks the time on his watch. Four hours until he can bolt. Until he can go home and wait nervously by the phone for her to call. _Pathetic. _

“What are you daydreaming about?” Sebastian nearly jumps out of his skin. He tries to spin in his chair, but Marianne has a strong hold on it.

“I’m sorry. I’ve just been-“

She lays her hands firmly on his shoulders and he goes rigid so the touch doesn’t make him shudder. “Don’t worry,” She says, leaning down so their faces are parallel. He sees her wink out of the corner of his eye. “I won’t tell the boss.” Her voice is so different than when he hears it on his voice machine. Steady and teasing, none of the barely masked desperation in those late-night voice messages, none of the faint slurring. Like an entirely different person. “How’ve you been feeling?

Sebastian flinches. “It’s been hard,” he says, wondering again if that particular lie had been even close to worth it. If letting this woman into his most private grief had been anything other than phenomenally stupid.

“Of course. That’s to be expected. Grief is so hard” Sebastian has to fight the impulse to roll his eyes. She squeezes his shoulders, touch lingering a little, fingers dragging down the sides of his arms. “So.” The word blows hot air on the shell of his ear. “When can I get you back over for dinner, huh?”

The tendons in his neck pulse. He stretches out his fingers, trying to claw back some leverage. “I’m not sure,” he replies, “there’s still a lot to handle.”

Her hands leave him quickly. “Well, I’m always around.” Her voice fades as she leaves. Sebastian can’t help but imagine her alone in that hollow apartment, masturbating on her unnervingly white couch. His first impulse is to tell Joni about it. His grief redoubles.

The impulse to call his mother is new and slightly frightening. He can’t actually remember the last time he wanted to. Not when he was away at camp as a kid; not in college; not in his first, arguably much more stressful, months in the city. But that night his apartment feels especially empty and the cold darkness coming in through the big windows is too much for him. He remembers, as he’s dialing the number, that even when he spent all his days in the cool, concrete basement, coming up to the warm hearth of the rest of the house was always a relief.

He tries not to overthink it. That goes out the window as soon as his mother answers. She sounds a little distracted. He can hear the distinct scratch of her drafting pencil on paper. Sebastian immediately starts to cry. Whimpering like a little boy. It shocks him, even as he lets it happen. His tears seem to stun her too and for a long time, she’s silent. Only the sound of his sniffling filling the air between them. And then he hears her clear her throat. “Sebastian?”

“Hi, mom.” It comes out with a whine.

Silence again. He can see the expression he knows she’s wearing clear as day. That mild terror she’s always had with him, reverting back to those fears of young motherhood whenever he did something she couldn’t anticipate. Like this, he imagines, just like this. Robin pulls it quickly together. “Oh, sweetheart, what’s happened?”

“Nothing.” He wipes furiously at his nose, snot sticky on his fingers and palm.

“Something’s obviously happened.”

He doesn’t even know where to begin, doesn’t even _want _to begin. “I don’t know, mom. I’m just having a hard time.”

“It’s okay to have a hard time. We all have those sometimes.”

“Yeah.” He wipes his cheeks with the sleeve of his sweatshirt. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I called.”

“You can always call, sweetheart. Always. Even if you don’t have anything to say.” Sebastian sniffles a little harder. “And whatever’s going on, it’s going to be okay.” Sebastian scoffs. “I promise.”

“Okay.” He stands a little straighter, trying to pull himself together. He _does _feel better, even if it’s only in inches. “Thanks, mom.”

“It’s funny,” she says and he can tell that she’s left her drafting table, can almost see her padding around the front windows of the shop, “I was just going to call you.”

“Oh yeah?” Sebastian grabs hold of the receiver and walks it over so he can plop down on his couch. He sniffles again. “Why?”

“Why don’t you come down for the Luau dinner this weekend? It’s the last one before Maru heads back to school and it’s been such a long time since you’ve been back in the Valley.”

“I, uh, I’ll see if I can make it.”

“_Sebastian._”

The idea of making that long drive back home makes him feel almost woozy. “Mom, listen, I’m sor-“

“Sebastian, please.”

He pauses, trying to remember the last time his mother ever used that tone with him, almost begging. His memories come up empty. An unsettled feeling crawls up his spine. “Sure. Sure, fine. I’ll be there.”

“Good,” she says and he can hear her smile, “I think it’ll be good for you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys really are the best <3. Thank you so much for reading and for commenting. You make this all so much fun.


	5. Hula*

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robin’s a little bit tricky and Joni’s a lot mad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright I took a lot of liberties with the Luau and made it more of a family sit down event because ~artistic license~

Of course, his mother wouldn’t tell him about this, wouldn’t give him a single fucking clue that _this _is what he’d be walking into. She must want to see him squirm.

All the windows in the house are open, a light breeze rolls through the sun-warmed wood, but Sebastian is chilled, frozen in the doorway, unable to cross the threshold into the dining room. To Robin's credit, Joni doesn’t seem all that shocked to see him there. Just a little wary, sitting at the far end of the table, paying an awful lot of attention to her fingernails. She looks gorgeous backlit by the sun. Almost ethereal. Her hair’s up, a few stray pieces curling around her neck, and even though she hasn’t looked up at him, he can tell by how tight her shoulders are, that she knows he’s there.

Sebastian shoots his mother a look that she easily ignores, pulling him into a tight hug. “So glad you could make it, Sebby. We all missed you at the Luau party on the beach this morning. Everyone sends their love. Even Mayor Lewis.”

He hugs her back stiffly. “You wanna explain yourself?” He hisses in her ear.

She beams at him, patting him softly on the cheek. “Dinners all set. Go on and have a seat now.”

Sebastian glances over at the table. There’s only one empty seat and it is, of course, right beside Joni. He sits stiffly down beside her, heart pounding in his ears. Joni smells warm, a little sweet, like the flowers she loves so much have imprinted themselves onto her. He glances over. She’s in a little slip of a dress. Cottony. A pale floral print. Buttons all down the front. He sees, when he lets his eyes wander, that it just barely grazes the middle of her thighs and Sebastian has to take a deep, steadying breath. She bristles beside him and, Yoba, he really cannot blame her for that. “Sorry,” he whispers.

“For what?” She hisses back. He can only look at her like a lost dog. What isn't he sorry for?

They don’t say another word to each other all the rest of dinner and then again after when they all gather outside, sitting around the backyard fire pit, sipping thick glasses of pineapple punch. And she doesn’t say anything when he opens his bedroom door after her second soft knock. The way she looks at him in the darkness mkes all the words he might have said to her die on his tongue as he steps aside to let her into the dank basement. The first word she says to him that night is his name when he slips his fingers inside of her and she so warm and wet and soft and, Yoba, it’s almost too much. 

Sebastian inches that pretty dress up around her hips, fumbling with its top buttons so he can run his lips across her tits. Her skin is hot, vital. “I want you so bad,” he whispers in her ear.

“I’m here,” she says and later he will wonder if she says it to try and reassure herself, but in that moment, in the heat between their bodies, he wants to find out just what it feels like to have her back, wants to paint gratitude all over her body. “I want to fucking taste you,” he pants, rolling his hips, adding another finger, “I want to make you cum so hard you can’t fucking see straight.” Her hips churn against his hand, thighs straddling him, moans falling out of her mouth. “You’re gonna cum until you can’t fucking speak.”

Joni groans. “Fuck, Sebastian.” He flips her over easily, stalking up her body like a predator. She twitches when his lips first meet her clit, but once he drags his tongue up the lips of her pussy, she lets out a long, low, desperate moan. Her hands search for him, pulling almost too hard at his hair once they find his scalp. “God, please.” Her voice breaks as he pulls her clit between his lips. “Please Sebastian, fuck.” He replaces his tongue with two fingers, raising his head to watch her body writhe.

“Come on, baby, cum for me." Her bottom lip is caught painfully between her teeth, eyes scrunched up. Her free hand is clutching his metal bedframe, knuckles white, and he knows that she’s thinking too hard, that she’s too tense. He kisses below her belly button. “Let it go, Joni. Let it all go. Just fucking cum.” He starts in on her clit with his thumb and after one taut beat of silence, she breaks. Joni cries out, thighs pressing hard against him as they try to stutter closed. 

Her moans become whines, hips slowing as she slides her other hand down her stomach, fingers ghosting over the golden hair at the apex of her thighs.

Sebastian sits back on his haunches, rubbing soft circles with one hand on the bare skin of her thigh. “Oh shit.” He’s winded “God, Joni." He leans down to kiss the spot where her thigh meets the sensitive flesh beside her pussy. “That was fucking…” He has nothing else to say, just leans back and runs his fingers through his hair. Still panting, Joni reaches down her body, eyes fixed at a spot between his ribs, and yanks hard at his jeans. He chuckles, feeling lighter than he has since he left the Valley. She tugs harder and he starts to help her undo the button. “Alright, alright.” He’s delirious with relief, delirious that he’s touching her again and once he frees his cock, he pulls her up, taking a nipple between his teeth, growling as she sinks down onto him. His hands hold her waist steady, thrusting up into her with the kind of primal desperation he’s not sure he’s ever felt. Their bodies find that old rhythm. Their bodies have already forgotten so much.

It takes him longer than it should for him to realize that she’s started to cry. He’s still inside her, head leaning heavily in the crook of her neck. Her stomach pulses under his hand and it’s only when she rocks back to wipe the tears from her cheek that he sees clearly the stricken, _broken _look on her face. The room comes slamming into focus. “Fuck.” She turns away from him. “_Fuck_.” And then he’s scrambling. Pulling out of her, taking her tightly by the shoulders, trying to meet her gaze. “What did I do? What did I do wrong?”

Joni untangles herself, brushing him off in that breezy way she’s gotten so good at, and starts searching for her clothes, never meeting his eyes. “I’m fine.” She pulls her panties up her long legs, rummaging for a shirt that she wrestles over her head. “I’m fine. Just need to go to the bathroom.”

“No, stop. Stay with me.” His voice is thin and strained, edging on tears. “Please, _please._” She glances back at him, one foot already on the stairs. “Please don’t go.”

It’s almost a shock when she pads back into the basement, but his relief at seeing her again tonight is short-lived. She’s managed to school her face into neutral nothing. It unnerves him. He sits on the edge of his bed, hands clasped between his knees, and tries to keep his voice even. “I feel like we need to talk about what just happened.”

She wipes at her cheeks, looking at him like she’s just woken up. “I’m really tired, Sebastian. I’d just like to head to bed.” She glances around his room. “If you need to stay up your mom made me a cot in the front room and-“

“No sleep here.” She pauses, looking at him. “Please.” She nods almost curtly and adjusts the fabric shorts she’s wearing, heading quietly toward the bed. He lays the pads of his fingers gently on her stomach to stop her as she makes to climb up beside him “Just…did I do something wrong?” He peers up at her. “Did I hurt you?”

The pain that breaks through her careful mask rips him clean up the middle. The look is fleeting. Her voice is soft. “You’ve never hurt me like that.” It does nothing to soothe him.

He can’t tell which is worse. The way she lays heavy and still like a corpse beside him or how, when she thinks he’s asleep, she starts to cry again. Just whimpering, pathetic noises. Filled to the brim with pain. They’re both awful. They both feel, acutely, like the punishment he deserves. But he can’t stand it. He can’t stand to have her hurting like this.

When he ventures to softly rub her arm, to try somehow to soothe her, she stiffens and falls quiet. He lets his hand stay on her arm, hopes that it, at least, makes her feel a little warmer. He tries to breathe his apologies into the skin of her neck. _I’ve never been so sorry in my whole life. _They lay awake all night, touching and still so far apart.

In the morning Robin leaves them a pot of coffee and then leaves them well enough alone and Sebastian wonders if Joni can tell how much of a set up this all is. They stand silently across from each other, their coffee going cold in their hands. A small chorus of birds calling from the branches just outside the kitchen window. It's the most beautiful summer day he can remember in the mountains. Cool and crisp and sunny. He feels sick. 

Finally, finally, he inclines his head to meet her eyes and, with the softest voice he has, asks her if she’s okay.

The question ripples through her, her knuckles white from how tightly she’s suddenly gripping the ceramic mug and then her whole body just slumps. The answer comes out with more emotion than he’s heard from her since the day he left the farmhouse. “I’m so confused.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that so he goes with the first thing his brain offers up. “I came back.”

She quirks an eyebrow. “You what?”

“I came back. To the farm. Before you moved, I mean. I wanted to work things out I…you weren’t there.”

Her face is, for a moment, unreadable, then she sighs, looking off the to the side. “You don’t have to lie.”

He startles. “What?”

“There’s no reason to lie about something like that, Sebastian. I’m already here, aren’t I?”

“I’m not lying.” He sounds more defensive than he wants to.

Joni sighs. “Why wouldn’t Shane tell me about that?”

Sebastian tenses. “Because Shane’s a dick.”

She grits her teeth. “Shane is _not_ a dick.”

Silence again. He knows better than to head down that thorny path. Sebastian clears his throat, taking a few fortifying sips of coffee. “Are you taking the bus back?”

“Yep,” she says, not looking at him.

“Let me drive you.” She hesitates. “There’s no reason for you to take the bus all the way back.”

She snaps up to look hard at him. “Oh, there's no reason huh? No reason at all that you can think of?”

Sebastian keeps his gaze on the ground. “I’m…sorry.”

“That was the _shittiest_ fucking apology.”

Sebastian groans, wiping his palms down his face. “Shit, I know. I’m so bad at this.”

“Apparently not.”

“What does that mean?”

“I just let you fuck me.”

“If you didn’t want to-“

“I just let you fuck me raw.”

He frowns, affronted. “I’m clean.”

Joni laughs bitterly, setting her mug a little too hard down on the kitchen table. “Oh well, that’s great. What a fucking relief.”

“I am so confu-“

“I let you cum inside me.”

Sebastian frowns, confused, and then his brain catches up to the rest of him. “Oh shit, are you not still on the pill?”

“Of course I am! That’s not the point. I don’t just let random dudes cum in me! That is something that I, categorically, do not do.”

“I’m sorry. I should have asked.”

“But that’s the thing, right? You didn't because you already asked me. Almost a year ago and then I told you-" 

"That I didn't need to ask anymore." He sets his coffee mug down, "that you trusted me." He remembers that night so clearly. The tv playing softly in the background, their bodies chilled by the winter air, seeking warmth from each other. 

"All the good that did me." Sebastian has nothing to say to that, no defense. He'll weather whatever storm she'll lash on him. He decides that immediately. "We forgot we aren’t together anymore. Which was, if you're curious, why fucking you, why letting you _hold me _all night long made me cry.”

“We could be.” He sounds pleading. "We could be together again." 

Joni rolls her eyes. “Oh fuck off.”

“I’m serious.”

“Yeah, I fucking know you are.” She frowns, then when she speaks again, it almost a shout. “I was doing fine! I was finally doing completely fine without you and you just walk right back into my life to fuck my shit up all over again.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says, seriously.

“Bullshit! You fucking delight in hurting me.”

Now it’s Sebastian’s turn to yell. “I do not! I do fucking not! I love you!” They both freeze. Sebastian gulps, lowering his voice. “If I could have taken you with me to Zuzu I would have.”

“Why couldn’t you have!? You didn’t even ask me. I would have gone.”

His chest aches. “You would have?”

“In a heartbeat. No questions asked.” She makes to leave and he reaches out to grab her wrist. She levels a look at him that makes him immediately release it.

“Please let me drive you.”

She wavers, seemingly considering. “No,” she says finally. Her features have softened, some unknown transformation has taken place and he'd _kill _to know what direction her thoughts have just taken. She almost reaches out to him, catching herself just before her fingers land. She holds them close to her chest. “But I’ll give you a call okay?”

“Promise?”

Fury rises up in her again, eyes livid. “I don’t owe you anything.”

He flinches. “I know.”

She wavers, those eyes so soft again, almost trusting, then her face slams shut. “I’ll think about it” She breezes past him back into the hall. “I gotta go say goodbye to your mom.” The floral scent of her skin lingers around him even after she’s gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading!


	6. Threads

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Turns out small town politics aren’t just for small towns.

“You will not believe what just fucking happened to me.” Joni comes crashing into the apartment, that specific grimy fatigued feeling that only bus travel provides still heavy on her, mixing roughly with the harsh, manic feeling what happened at the Luau left in her. But it’s not Leah waiting for her in the living room, but someone else. It takes her a beat to recognize her as the sculptor girl from two floors down. Joni stops short, feeling immediately like she’d confessed something revealing to a stranger. She clears her throat and straightens up a little. “Oh, uh, hey.”

The girl cocks her head, brushing hair out of her face. She’s barefoot on their couch, balancing a bowl of what looks like soup between her crossed legs. Up close, Joni can see that she’s growing out the shaved side of her hair, that she has a thick gold ring through her left nostril. She’s got a tattoo on her neck, the linework so dense that Joni can’t really make out what it’s supposed to be. “Hey um,” she glances back toward the kitchen and, apparently finding nothing, shifts in her seat, “well, I should probably get going.” She sets the bowl down on their rickety coffee table with a clatter and breezes past Joni toward the door. Joni watches her go, thoughts so slow that she doesn’t hear Leah come out of the kitchen.

She jumps when she turns to find Leah watching, paint-stained overalls a little disheveled, like she’d put them on in a careless hurry. “She leave?”

“Uh, yeah,” Joni glances back at the door, “I think so.”

“Cool.” Leah plops down on the couch, tipping the girl’s bowl to see how much is left. “So what am I not going to believe?”

“We fucked.”

“Good as you remembered it?”

Joni stops, taken aback. “I, uh, what?” Leah just looks at her expectantly. “I guess I sort of thought you’d be upset.”

“At who? You or him?”

Joni sits down on the arm of the couch. “Um…either?”

“I’ve never been anti-Sebastian.”

Joni narrows her eyes. “You offered to kill him.”

Leah grins, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “And I still would, but I don’t dislike him. I think he fucked up.”

“Yeah, you could say that?”

“He apologize?”

Joni shrugs. “Sort of.”

“Did you accept it?”

“I…” Joni’s thoughts come screeching to a halt. Had she? Was that what fucking him had been? It had been such a strange impulse to go to his bedroom, one she hadn’t even tried to resist. “I guess I sort of did. But I’m not sure he knows that.” Joni turns back to look at Leah and notices, for the first time, the deep circles under her eyes. “Hey, whoa are you okay?”

Leah snaps out of whatever trance she’d been in, rolling her shoulders and stretching out her arms. “Yeah, definitely.” Her gaze lingers on the empty bowl on the coffee table.

Joni can feel the density in the air. Leah’s not often like this, not often adrift in her own thoughts, and the memories of her night with Sebastian fade quickly as she sits on the couch watching her. “So…this girl?”

“She has a name.” Leah says, not taking her eyes off the bowl.

Joni slides from the arm onto the couch, crossing her legs close to her body. “You haven’t told me it.” Leah just shrugs. “So, are you like seeing each other or?”

“Rita.”

“What?”

“Her name is Rita.”

“Oh.”

Leah tears her gaze from the bowl and stands. “And no, we’re not ‘like seeing each other’ because relationships are minefields and I’d like to keep all the limbs I have left.”

“Oddly graphic metaphor”

Leah laughs, the sound humorless. “Do you work tomorrow?”

“No…”

“Come to the beach with me.”

“Right now?” Leah nods, suddenly exuding energy. Joni cocks her head. She digs around in the pocket of her jeans, fishing for her watch. “At…” She squints at the clock face. “seven pm?”

Leah shrugs. “It’s a warm night.”

It’s a clear night too and the cool breeze blowing off the water sends goosebumps racing up Joni’s bare legs. They’ve landed on a strip of sand down close enough to the edge of the beach that they can hear the gulls circling the harbor, the creak of fishing rigs come to port for the night. Down the beach a ways a few tourists are lingering near the reefs. Their voices become soft and distorted as they travel across the shallow dunes.

Leah rolls a joint, lights it absently. Out here, where the salty air cleanses everything, it smells earthy, a little sweet. She inhales a long time and the smoke billows out when she releases it. It disappears up into the stars now slowly appearing in the darkening sky. All pale pinks and blues and oranges. Joni stretches out her legs and lets her body feel long, whole. There’s something about the sherbet sky, about the way the sand feels rough on her skin. Her mind might be buzzing, a chaotic mess of emotions and portends, but her body found solace in Sebastian’s touch, more loose and relaxed than it’s been in a long, long time. She tries not to think too hard about it, about what it means.

They lay on the beach for a long time. The sand is still hot on their thighs even as the cool ocean breeze rolls over their shoulders. Joni’s nearly dozed off when Leah clears her throat. ‘I went to an internet café today. After I got off work”

Joni rolls on her side to look at her. “What for?”

Leah shrugs. “Got curious.”

“About what?” Joni can feel the sinister edge to Leah’s voice. The beach seems suddenly darker, the sound from the city muted now behind them.

“What do you think?’

“I honestly have no fucking idea.”

“Kel.”’

Joni sits bolt upright in the sand. The light from the ocean casts pale blue over their bodies. Leah’s eyes are closed, her hands crossed over her belly like a mummy, like a placid corpse. The joint is burning out in the sand beside her. “What about her?”

“She’s still in the city.” The waves roll up to their ankles. Water frigid, unbothered by the heat of summer. “All that talk about moving out to the suburbs, starting a family. It was all bullshit.” Joni reaches across Leah’s body to pinch the joint out completely, the faint burn against the pads of her fingers almost pleasant. “She used to make me feel so guilty for keeping her here and now here she is.” 

“Is she still with that guy?” Leah just shrugs. “Hey, for real. Are you okay?”

“Jury’s still out.”

Joni lays her hand on Leah’s wrist. “What can I do?”

Leah opens one eye and smile. She pats Joni on the hand. “Just this. Just keep doing this.”

“Why do you think she stayed? I mean do you have any idea…”

Leah squeezes Joni’s wrist. “Let’s drop it. Just wanted to air it out, I guess. Now I just want to listen to the ocean.” 

“Yeah.” Joni lays back onto the warm sand, eyes blinking to adjust to the churning half-darkness above her. “Yeah, sure.”

They lay there for a long time. Until it’s so dark that even with the city lights at their back, the ocean rolls up black at the bottoms of their feet. Their solitary sunless sea. It’s too cold to be out here really and the empty beach is almost eerie. Joni’s thoughts are wide. Big and billowing like heavy clouds, the kind that span the whole sky. Sometimes the clouds out by the farmhouse looked like this. And it reminds her. “I went back to the farm while I was there.”

Joni hears Leah shift in the sand. “Oh shit, and?”

“It looks beautiful. It looks…” Joni feels just the smallest twinge of sadness. “So much better than when I lived there. He’s got like rows and rows of stuff. Real crops. He’s even cordoned off a little orchard. Peaches, I think. The trees are just twigs right now, but the way he’s babying them…”

“What is it between the two of you?”

“Nothing.” Joni says easily, surprised at the question.

“Does he know that?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading guys <3


	7. Downpour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The universe, and Joni's stomach, intervenes.

The only thing in her stomach is six cups of coffee and the stale heel of the coffee cake Lydia put in the break room five days ago. They’d been doing inventory all day, trying to reorganize the bookstore’s wildly extensive mystery section by both theme _and _author and Joni’s brain feels like mush as she heads down the eerily sparse street.

It’s late summer. Should be the hottest days of the year. But a front has moved in. The air feels electric, almost metallic, on the tongue, and by the time the sun sinks into the harbor, the weather is downright chilly. The silk of the slip dress she’d thrown over one of Leah’s old summer camp t-shirts is unpleasantly cool against Joni’s skin. She shivers, goosebumps racing up her bare arms and legs. The diner next door closed early for the day, a hastily written sign tacked to the front door. Joni adjusts her hair in its reflection.

Leah left a note on the fridge about leftover chili and muttered something about putting beef tips in the crockpot when Joni called at lunch, but Joni’s stomach is on autopilot, searching out a very specific craving.

The restaurant is mostly empty save for a table up by the front door and Joni inhales, breathing in the heavy scent of fried meat and tangy herbs. The warm air billowing out from the kitchen feels so nice on her skin.

It’s only when she notices that the table’s gone quiet that she takes a second look. Joni yelps like a scared dog and, if the way he goes completely rigid is any indication, Sebastian isn’t doing much better. A suited man in sitting across the table from him. He looks from Joni to Sebastian then back, a grin spreading across his face. “You just be Joni.” She sees a vein in Sebastian’s neck pulse. The other man stands and extends his hand “I’m Aaron.” Joni glances over at Sebastian like she’s waiting for instruction. He’s looking everywhere but her. She takes his hand. “So nice to meet you.”

“Yeah, uh, you too.”

“Sit down, sit down.” He says patting the spot on the booth beside him. “We haven’t even ordered yet.” Joni hesitates, fingers worrying the hem of her dress. “Don’t worry. I don’t bite.”

It’s a stiff conversation driven mostly by Aaron who seems utterly unfazed by any of the tension between them. Lots of _what do you do’s_ and _do you know so and so’s_. Aaron, it turns out, is a Zuzu native too, but they went to high schools on opposite ends of the city and their frames of reference are totally off. It feels strange to talk about the city at first, but Aaron has an easy way about him and soon Joni finds herself easing into the conversation. Reminiscing about the Winter Star light show at the Capitol building and the big Spirit’s Eve parade they have every year down first street. But her comfort is short-lived. Sebastian seems totally underwater, watching Joni like she’s some kind of apparition, only talking when Aaron prompts him. Joni wonders, briefly, if he’s on something.

When the old man comes to take their orders, Joni orders mapo tofu, an old favorite, but by the time it arrives her appetite is all but gone, Sebastian’s shoulders even tenser than when she’d come in. She watches the two of them eat, thankful for this lapse into quiet, but when Aaron excuses himself to go to the bathroom Joni tenses again. Their silence will, now, mean something entirely different. Sebastian seems to feel it, peering up at her from under the stray curls on his forehead.. He nods toward her food. “Is it not good?”

‘It’s fine.” She replies, looking anywhere but at him, landing finally on the food in front of her. The tofu jiggles thickly, glistening with sauce.

“You’re not eating it.”

“I’ve lost my appetite.”

“Because of me.”

Joni looks up at him. Those sharp eyes of his have softened so much it’s hard to look at them. He’s like a little boy, lip trembling, shoulders slumped. “No, not because of you.”

He looks off to the side. “I swear I didn’t plan this.”

“I know.” Joni laughs a little, the sound surprising them both. “You looked like you were about to pass out when I walked in.”

Sebastian fights a smile. This is almost easy. This is almost like it used to be. “So are you just getting off work then?” Joni nods, pushing around a few grains of rice. “At the bookstore.”

“Yep.”

“Do you like it there?” She nods. “That’s good. I’m glad.”

She glances up at him again and the sudden urge to wrap her arms around his neck is overwhelming. She stifles it with a few bites of food, trying to tell herself it’s just because he’s familiar. The tofu is _hot, _the flavor nearly divine. Its burn is a welcome distraction. “This place is really good.” Joni says, mostly to herself.

“Yeah,” Sebastian says, “Aaron seems to think it’s the best.” He fiddles with the straw in his drink. “It’s not the place you went to in middle school is it?”

Now Joni honest to Yoba laughs. It had been such a stupid story, one she’d told him as they dozed off in each other’s arms. “You remember me telling you that?” 

Sebastian smiles a little sheepishly, averting his eyes. “Yeah, of course.”

Aaron comes back in a hurry, startling them both. “Just got a call from our benevolent overlord.” He winks at Sebastian. “Gotta head. You’ll pick up the tab won’t you.” Sebastian opens his mouth to argue, but Aaron shushes him. “I’ll hit you back next time we go out.” He smiles over at Joni. “_So _nice to meet you.” Joni nods at him, trying to get a better read on what’s just happened. Something passes between Sebastian and Aaron that she can’t decipher. The bell above the door rings as he leaves and the restaurant feels suddenly like a wind tunnel.

They sit quietly for a few moments, Sebastian stuffing food into his mouth, Joni leaving it well enough alone. Both trying to accomplish the same thing. Neither doing it very successfully. “He’s nice.” Joni says, just as Sebastian tells her that he’s sorry.

“Oh,” they say again in unison.

“Go ahead.” Joni mutters.

Sebastian nods, swallowing thickly. “So uh, I just wanted to say that I’m sorry. Um…like in general. For everything.” Joni takes a deep breath. She doesn’t want to deal with this at all, not right now. And Sebastian apparently can sense that. “No, please just…” He swallows hard. “Just let me okay?” Joni half shrugs, half nods. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t there for you after Elliot.” The mention of his name makes her flinch. “Not like I should have been. I’m sorry I was such a coward. That I left the way I did. I’m sorry I left you a crazy voicemail that-”

“You don’t need to do this.”

“I want to do this. I want to do this so even if you decide to never speak to me again then you’ll know that I didn’t…that I never wanted to hurt you.” He shakes his head. “I know I hurt you. I know. It wasn’t…I wasn’t trying to.” 

“Okay.” Her mouth feels cottony.

“And I want you to know that I still love you.”

Joni’s heart _throbs_ but she can’t do anything but stay perfectly still, eyes look straight through him. “Noted.”

Sebastian shakes his head, letting out a breath that sounds like a laugh, that sounds like a cry. He lights a cigarette with trembling hands. “You have every right to be angry with me.”

_That _snaps Joni back to the present. “I was _not _looking for your permission to be,” she hisses.

He flinches. “Yeah, of course. Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.” They sit stony across from each other. “I’m sorry.” She waves him off. The old man sets their bill quietly down between them. Sebastian reaches for it. “Let me get this.”

Joni is a livewire, every nerve alight. “Why? So I can owe you something?” Sebastian recoils, stunned and Joni nearly clasps her hands to her mouth. “I didn’t mean-“

“Do you really think that lowly of me? That I’d ever do what your ex used to?”

“No,” she says and some of the tension slips out of the restaurant, “no I don’t.”

“Good. Because I would never do something like that.” Their eyes lock. He disengages first, rifling in his pocket for his wallet. “Can I walk you to the station?” Joni looks at him. She looks at him for a long time. That familiar face. Her heart is crawling up through her throat.

A soft rain has started to fall as they wait beside the tracks. All the trains are delayed, some accident on the central loop and more than a few people have given up waiting to try their luck with taxis. But Joni doesn’t have the cash for one and she isn’t about to ask Sebastian for it.

The rain gives the whole station a grey wash, and that chill has settled in for the long haul. Sebastian lights a cigarette, the glowing tip the warmest thing in sight. Joni wants to say something but her brain feels detached completely from her body. She either wants him to go away or to come and wrap his arms around her and neither seems possible or even like something she wants. Her brain is a mess.

And then, like the heavens have no mercy for either of them, a loud crack of thunder rolls across the sky, opening up a torrent so sudden that the air pulses. Joni shouts in surprise then the two of them scramble, heading for the glass shelter that, in the sudden downpour, has disappeared completely.

“Holy shit.” Sebastian scrapes his wet hair off his forehead once they’re safely under the shelter. The rain is coming down in thick sheets. The whole world like they’re watching it through the glass of a fishbowl. “Holy fucking shit. Mother nature is not fucking around tonight.” He wipes some of the water from his face then turns to Joni. “You okay?”

Maybe it’s the way his clothes are sticking to him, or how his curls slicked back off his forehead highlight the sharp lines of his face, but she’s on him before she can stop herself. Hands fisted tightly in the collar of his shirt, kissing him hard. All teeth and tongue. Sebastian’s hand slides up to cup her head, the other tight around her waist. They kiss until the rain slows, until their lips are raw, and when they finally break away from each other, both of them are panting. Joni lays her head against his chest, waiting to hear the familiar thump of his heart, always so strong and steady. She sniffles against the fabric of his button-down. The fabric is too stiff, too unlike what he used to wear. He holds her hands tightly, then wraps his arms around her, one hand carding through her hair. “Let me take you home,” He whispers in her ear. She shakes her head violently, tears falling now. So easy, so long-awaited. “Please, please come home with me.”

“I can’t, I can’t”

“You can.” He says, begging now. The steady rhythm of his heart speeding up, ragged like a jackrabbit. “It’s so easy. Just come. Just decide to come.”

She pulls away from him, holding herself tightly. “I don’t trust you. I _can’t _trust you. We were so in love Sebastian. So in love. And you walked away. Like it was the easiest thing in the world.”

He rakes his fingers through his hair, bouncing on the balls of his feet. All nervous, desperate energy. “I won’t ever make that same mistake again. Please, _please _believe me. I will be here for as long as you let me. Always, _always. _”

She is teetering on a precipice, but she rights herself. Her voice is suddenly steady, full of conviction. “Then you can wait. You can give me time.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Neither do I.”

He breathes raggedly through the fingers of one hand, eyes darting around the station. He finally settles, Joni can see the effort in the tendons of his neck. He looks right at her. “Does that mean I’ll see you again?”

“Yeah. I think so, yeah.” He nods absently, looking off into the distance. Without a word, he slips his jacket off his shoulder and lays it carefully over hers. “What’s this?”

He sniffs, face unreadable. “You’re never dressed for the weather”

Joni drops her bag in the doorway to Leah’s bedroom. It lands with a wet thunk that startles Leah out of bed. “Hell.” She rubs her eyes, “did you just get home?” Joni sniffles, wiping under her eyes. “Are you okay?”

“Can I come lay with you?”

“Yeah, of course. Take that jacket off. You’re soaked.” A crack of lightning cuts across their windows, thunder following booming behind. The bed creaks as Joni crawls onto it. Goose lets out a warning hiss then pads off into the hall. “Something spooked him, I think. Wanted to cuddle me all night long.” Joni nods, numb, and lays down.

Leah runs her fingers through Joni’s hair, working out the knots. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Ran into Sebastian.”

“Again?” Joni nods, kneading the heels of her hands into her eyes, trying to stop herself from crying. Leah lets her roll over, their foreheads meeting. Joni closes her eyes. She listens to the soft pop playing quietly on Leah’s stereo, to the creak of the apartment’s walls in the wind. A siren howls past. Leah strums her fingers on Joni’s hairline, humming softly to the music. “You know,” she says, finally, when Joni has almost slipped off to sleep, “I think the universe is really into love.”

Joni props her head up. “What do you mean?”

“What are your odds right? Running into him twice in the biggest city in the world?” Leah pats her gently on the cheek. “I think the universe goes out of its way to make love happen.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading guys <3


	8. Grounds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joni tries to fall back into old patterns, but the lessons she’s learned in the Valley keep her afloat. 
> 
> TW: past sexual assault, discussion of self harm, vomit.

It’s late September, but today feels like the first proper day of fall. The damp heat of summer by the Bay hung on well past its due, but now summer is nothing but a memory. Wide amber oak leaves mix on the sidewalk with the canary yellow of fallen chestnut. The city has marked them, crushed them into the sidewalk, wet with the steam billowing out of buildings. Some crunch under Joni’s boots as she walks, others make her slow her pace, slick and slippery. The afternoon sun is bright, but the air is so chilled it has the taste of winter on it. That might be, if Joni lets herself think it, an omen. This weather. Joni pulls her coat closer around her. Sebastian’s coat, actually. The one he gave her a couple weeks before. His number is still heavy in the pocket. She wore the coat for luck though she would rather die than admit that to anyone.

The train to midtown was thirty minutes late and Joni is quickly losing her nerve. That’s probably an omen too and as Joni stands across the street from the coffee shop, the whole neighborhood feels palpably cursed. She feels a rush of emotions and then nothing. A strange, almost sinister, absence. She feels younger too. Like all her time in the Valley has vanished. Like she’s still the same mess she always was in the city, being pulled by the tide in whatever direction it thought to take her. It’s not what she was hoping for. But she forges ahead anyway, holding her breath as she steps through the front door.

She’d first picked this coffee shop, Yoba years ago now, because of how airy it felt on the inside. Almost like a greenhouse. All white tile and big windows. The roof a maze of exposed piping, fashionably industrial. The bar and register sit in the middle of the café, an island of chrome, and the massive philodendra spilling off the counters and tables give the whole place the feel of a space reclaimed at the end of the world. The intricately chalked menu on the far wall reminds Joni that this chaos is carefully curated. And, lord, is the coffee overpriced. She’d forgotten about that. And, oh, there he is. Just like she’d hoped. Smiling from behind the counter.

This, _this, _is an old coping mechanism. Maybe the oldest in her book. From childhood even. When her grief and that deep, unshakeable sense of dread would be too intense, she’d scratch hard at her arms. An almost animal reflex. Pain to distract from pain.

So that must be why she’s come here. There’s really no other explanation. Because the pain, and the chaos, inside of her is too much. Because whenever she even thinks about Sebastian, or hell any time she even sees a dark-haired man on the street, the world feels upended. She couldn’t parse all the emotions inside of her so she decided, nursing a cup of coffee, watching people on the sidewalk in front of her building, that she’d take the nuclear approach. And this, she knows as the familiar smell of espresso and clean rush of steam waft over her, is as nuclear as it gets.

He looks more handsome than she remembers him. More normal too. So normal that she feels foolish for thinking seeing him would hurt her. It _does _hurt her, but in a softer way. A way that almost feels like longing. Joni brushes her hair back behind her ears and glances around the café. The people milling around do nothing to soothe her, so she turns her attention back to the register. Back to the man behind it. He has sandy hair, long enough to graze his cheekbones, parted just a little off-center. That charming, sort of wily, face she’s seen in a hundred movies. Eyes just a touch unfocused, like he tokes before work. Pretty lips, she notices unnervingly. When he turns to give the order to the barista, the stud in his right ear shimmers under the light. She wonders, fingers worrying the hem of Sebastian’s coat, if she might have asked him for his number once. If things had been different.

Her heart pounds as she waits in line. Each step forward like a march toward darkness, toward terror. The woman in front of her orders something complex and it buys Joni some time. It also lets the tremor that’s been building settle into her hands. She isn’t sure she’ll be able to talk. He smiles at her when it’s her turn, then does a double-take. She can tell he doesn’t quite recognize her and that smarts like an open wound. He _should _recognize her. She should haunt his thoughts just like he haunts hers. She doesn’t know what she expected.

Joni orders a latte because it’s the first thing she can think of. She can’t remember if she even likes them. When he asks her what kind of milk she wants, her brain fizzles and she says, with a shrug, that she doesn’t care and it’s the sort of laying down and taking it that makes her feel like maybe this is some sort of great, horrible déjà vu. He smiles, laughing softly to himself, as he writes it down on a pad of paper. “Have you been in here before?”

Joni goes rigid. “A couple times,” she manages.

He has a nice smile. Too soft. Too soft for the things he’s done to her. “Well, you should come in more often.” His smile widens then he shrugs, almost embarrassed, “I mean, anyway” he clicks his tongue, “latte coming right up.”

The latte tastes like nothing. It burns the roof of her mouth. The night of the party he’d been wearing something similar to what he is now and Joni wonders if maybe he’d come straight from work. He had smelled vaguely like coffee that night, his hand lightly on her throat, lips breathing hot under her ear. That night is harder to think about than it used to be. An interesting development that she doesn’t linger on for too long, even as she forces herself to go through the night bit by bit.

Her ex hadn’t even touched her that night and maybe that was the worst part now that she’s really thinking about it. That he hadn’t even bothered. That her body hadn’t interested him anymore beyond whatever he had been trying to prove to those two men. One of them his coworker, the other humming now cheerfully behind the espresso machine. He’d sat like a director beside the bed, legs crossed, nursing this drink. Outside that small, dark second bedroom the party had continued. No one the wiser. “See if you can fit both of you in her pussy,” he’d said, sounding almost bored and she’d tensed, holding her breath. In the hospital, she’d told Dr. Rainier that she hadn’t even fought, hadn’t even raised the smallest objection and instead just tried to relax her body, to loosen it for what she had seen as inevitable. It had been a failure then, in her mind, of her sense of self-preservation. A prelude to her inevitable attempt to take her own life. Sometimes, she’d told her, though Joni had only been half-listening, we do what we think is best to survive. Like prey going limp in the jaws of a predator. Playing dead in the hope that the vice will loosen, in the hope that even an inch will be enough. Joni can’t remember how long exactly she bled. A week or ten days. 

He hums softly from behind the counter, and then he looks her direction, smiling shyly, almost demure. Joni can’t stand _that _for another second. She pulls her purse over her shoulder, shaky fingers barely keeping hold of Sebastian’s jacket. The bathroom is dark like the bathroom in a club and she has to fumble to find the furthest stall.

She throws up bile and the half of her latte she managed to choke down. It swirls milky and pale in the toilet bowl. When she looks at herself in the mirror, she is jolted backward. Her makeup smudged, a faint bruising on her neck. It’s that night. Her dress shimmering around her thighs, sequins dug into the small of her back as those two men press into her from both sides.

She splashes her face with water and her real reflection comes back into view. “Fuck.” The girl at the sink next to her shoots her a wary look.

As she hurries out of the coffee shop, he calls from behind the counter. “Have a good day!”

The knock startles her. She’s dozed on the couch, tv playing muted infomercials in the background. She’d taken a couple of her anxiety meds when she got home, washed them down with the cold coffee Leah left in the pot. They’re long expired but seemed to do the job alright and she had to try and knead the heavy fog from her temples. It’s solidly night now. The city lights like dull stars out her window.

A second knock. Joni groans, wiping the sleep from her eyes, trying to find her bearings. The inside of her mouth is dry and sore and tastes vaguely like vomit. A reminder of the way she’d tortured herself that afternoon. Yoba, to what end? The knock is soft but insistent and after a few minutes of just trying to ride it out, Joni decides that whoever it is isn’t going away, rises to her feet and heads toward the front door.

She looks through the peephole and is surprised to find Rita on the other side of the door, slender fingers nervously toying with the stud in her lip. Joni glances behind her at the empty apartment. Leah left for a late-night shift at the restaurant right as Joni had come home. Rita must just want to fuck and, honestly, Joni doesn’t want to deal with it. She could just pretend no one’s home, go back to the couch and pull her blankets over her head. It’s not like Leah would really care all that much. But Rita knocks again and calls softly through the door. Joni sighs and opens the door. Rita’s eyes widen. “Oh, god, hey!”

“Hey, uh, Leah’s not here.”

Rita nods, looking off-center. “I, uh, actually wanted to talk to you.”

“Oh.” Joni pauses. “Rita right?”

She has a nice smile. “Yeah. Leah must have told you.” Rita laughs a little wistfully. “Leah’s told me all about you. She talks about you all the time.” Joni just nods and Rita clears her throat “Those plants are yours, right? On the roof”

Joni swallows hard. “Um, yeah, sorry if they’re in the way, I can try to move them”

Rita shakes her head, holding her hands up to stop her. “No, no, no. I want to buy some.” Joni cocks her head. “Um, I’m having an art show next Friday and um, I probably should have asked Leah if you’d be interested, but I wanted to…ask you in person.” She scratches at her neck, laughing lightly. “Leah might have told you that I’m an artist too.”

Joni tries to straighten her clothes, worried suddenly that she might look like a total disaster. “Yeah, she mentioned that.”

“I paint flowers actually. Like close-ups. Hyper-realistic. It’s hard to explain, I guess.” Rita shrugs, “Anyway. I’d love to buy some from you. The peonies specifically. I can find someone to do the arranging if you-“

“I can do the arranging.” Rita pauses, mouthing _oh_. “I, um, that’s what I used to do actually. I don’t know if Leah told you. Professionally. Arrangement.”

Rita has the brightest smile she’s ever seen, all teeth. “That’s great. That’s like exactly what I’m looking for.” 

Joni leans with her back to the door for a long time after Rita leaves, trying to process. It’s odd, off-kilter. Too good. Her first opportunity in the city. Her first real one. She tries not to get too excited, worried that she’s going to jinx herself. But even her well-worn sense of dread can't stifle the feeling rising up in her. She can’t stop smiling, even as her breath is ragged.

“I’m really looking forward to it.” Joni says with a smile. “Like so much.” They closed up shop a little early today. Had a bunch of new releases come in that they needed to sort through and Lydia got them both some coffee while they worked. Joni takes a long pull of it and settles back into her work, perched up on the back counter.

In the evening, the shop always looks a little like the inside of a paper lantern. The neon from outside loses its punch, blending easily with the soft orange of the setting sun, filtering through the thick stacks of books and papers.

“It sounds great.” Lydia says with a smile. Her face is full of soft lines. They trace her happiness. She’s got a pen tucked behind one ear, working another between her teeth as she peers down at the shipping list. “It sounds like exactly what you need.”

Joni feels light, brilliant. She’s grinning so hard her mouth hurts “Oh man I don’t even think I’m doing it justice how exciting this is for me.”

Lydia smiles again, patting her softly on the thigh. ‘Do you need time off work?”

“No, no it's at night, but thank you.” Joni takes a deep breath, letting her eyes flutter closed, inhaling the rich, dusty smell of the shop. She feels so safe here. Cocooned.

“That boy came back yesterday. On your day off.”

Joni pauses, slowly opening her eyes. Her heart thumps in her neck, stomach thrumming with butterflies “Oh yeah?”

“The handsome one with the dark hair.”

She should feel a sharp twist of pain, but it's only faint and then all she feels is that bright, sweet feeling of a new crush. Of something innocent, of something easy. “Yeah, I figured. Did he ask for me?”

Lydia stacks a few heavy paperbacks by the cash register. “Nope, but he lingered around the front for a while. Could tell he wasn’t really looking at the books. You want me to shoo him away next time?”

“No, no that’s okay.” Warmth spreads from her chest all down her arms.

The platform is bathed in the blue light of night and when the train’s doors creak open, a rush of steam billows out. Joni stuffs her hands in her pockets when she boards and finds the paper Sebastian gave her, softened and worn from all the times she's worried it with her fingers. She should call it. She should call him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading guys <3


	9. Taxi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian tries to make amends.

He can see the regret plain on her face before he even crosses the street. She’s holding herself in that way she used to when she thought no one was looking, when that sunshine-y exterior would fade a little, revealing the shadows churning underneath. He can name each of them, draw up an itemized list. And as he sees her there, rigid, he feels like he doesn’t deserve any of that anymore. He wants to make this worth her while.

Leaves crunch under his sneakers as he crosses the street and the sweater he’s thrown over his jeans feels a little too thin now that they’re closer to the harbor, the early October air tinged with winter.

She spots him and crosses her arms. He’s relieved to see she’s wearing a coat, relieved too that she’s spotted him before he reaches her side of the street. The last thing he wants to do is sneak up on her, but the way her face falls when she sees him makes his guts churn. _I almost burned your number, _she’d told him over the phone, _like a ritual sacrifice. _It had been a joke, sort of, but it had barbed his heart all the same. Her resentment, her anger, barely concealed. But the sadness that would sometimes tinge her voice hurt worse.

It had been a delicate dance to get here at all. She’d advance and retreat. Schedule a time and then, suddenly, right at the last minute, she’d call to cancel. Vague allusions to illness, to work. He figured she was losing her nerve or, worse, trying to punish him. He’d take it if that’s what she wanted to dish out. A willing, supplicant punching bag.

His worst fear, a fear that would curl tightly in his chest each time he put the phone down, was that eventually she’d stop returning his calls. That she’d disappear again, never to resurface. And so even though she looks like she might bolt out into the cold October air, just seeing her there in front of the coffee shop is a visceral relief. Sebastian stuffs his hands in his pockets, trying to keep his cool on the approach. “Hey.”

She blinks up at him, mouth pulled into a tight frown. The energy rolling off her is so tightly coiled that he feels, unnervingly, like she might crack under his touch. So he doesn’t touch her, he just opens the door, letting her breeze past him into the warm air of the café.

Sebastian’s surprised how quickly Joni softens once they’re inside. Her shoulders releasing, fingers falling loose from tight fists. And it’s a relief until it isn’t. Until he realizes that she’s pouring all her energy into holding back tears. That she’s a barely contained dam of sorrow and that he is now a crack in that dam, another layer of hurt and heartache. He is all the things he didn’t want to be, all the things he wanted to soothe in her.

Sebastian can see the strain on her as she tries to hold it back. And he doesn’t want her to. Not anymore. Not again. They used to tell each other all the things that kept them up at night. Trade nightmares in the fading light, shielding each other with their bodies. His are pressing at the seams now. He can’t imagine hers are any better contained. Sebastian lights a cigarette and takes a fortifying drag. “I will do whatever it takes to earn back your trust.”

Joni’s eyes widen then she scoffs, leaning away from him and crossing her arms over her chest. “Skipping straight to it then, huh? No small talk.”

Sebastian deflects her jab. “This is a second chance I know I don’t deserve.”

Joni takes a long sip of coffee, her face unreadable. “Who says this is a second chance?” He balks. “Maybe I’m just being friendly. Maybe I just want to be your friend.”

“We fucked.” His voice comes out reedy, embarrassed and a little stunned. He’s never seen her eyes this cold and wonders if maybe this is what he looked like that morning on her front porch. Totally unlike himself.

“You’ve never fucked your friends?”

Sebastian stutters. “Is that what you want?”

Joni goes rigid, eyes blazing. And then she deflates, looking away, tears threatening on her face. On instinct, Sebastian reaches across her table for her hand. She lets him take it. She’s so soft, fingers a little chilled at their tips. “I know I need to earn back your trust.”

Joni shakes her head, worrying her lip with her teeth. “I get why you did it.”

That surprises him and he almost lets go of her hand. Sebastian frowns, ashing his cigarette. He swallows hard. “What do you mean?”

When she looks at him, her smile is biting. “Did you forget that _I’m _the one who’s the expert in running away?” Sebastian stills. He had, actually. He’d forgotten how she’d run right into the Valley, how she’d left everything. How she’d taken that leap. The one he tried to take. “But I don’t think I would have ever run from you.”

“You’re running from me now.”

Her eyes simmer. “Don’t you think I have a reason now?” He grimaces. “I would have done anything for you. Anything. I would have tried to make it work. I loved you.”

Sebastian’s stomach twists. “Past tense.” She looks away and he leans in, chasing her. “I still love you. _Present tense._” She says nothing and he doubles down. “We could make this work. We just have to decide to.”

Joni scoffs. She tries to pull her hand away but he holds fast. “Is that what you think?” Her look shatters him. “You hurt me worse than anyone has ever hurt me. Because you showed me what was possible and then yanked it away from me.” Her eyes go a little hazy like she’s lost in a dream. “I could have gone my whole life without knowing what it felt like to be loved by you.” She sniffs. “And maybe that would have been better.”

“No,” he says firmly. “No, please. I _never _stopped loving you. I fucked up so badly, _so _badly but I’ve never once stopped loving you. I will do _anything._” Joni shakes her hand, finally pulling her hand from his. She stares hard at her coffee and the silence that falls between them is so thick that the café seems to turn just slightly on its axis. Sebastian rakes his hair back with his fingers and squares his shoulders. “Could we try?”

She looks up at him through her lashes. “To what?”

“Anything. I’ll take anything.” He lights another cigarette, blowing the smoke out the side of his mouth. “Hell, I’ll scrub your fucking toilets if that means we can talk sometimes.” She scoffs, shaking her head. “What?”

“You say all this like…like…” She taps two fingers on the table with each syllable. “It was so easy for you to walk away.” She pushes back, wiping furiously at her cheek, banishing tears. “Why would you throw yourself at my feet when you had me? You already _had _me, Sebastian. Hook and line.”

His chest is so tight. “I know.”

“So what the fuck?”

He shakes his head, letting his cigarette burn, ash dusting his fingers. “ I was scared.” He shakes his head again. “Terrified.”

“Of what?!” He shrugs, going stiff, and she sighs. “And so what? You aren’t now?”

“No,” he says, taking her hand back in his, “no, I’m not.” He’s so afraid it’s hard to breathe. Her fingers go limp in his grasp and then she squeezes. Joni pulls his hand across the table toward her. She nods, mostly to her herself and brings his hand up to her lips, resting them on his knuckles, not quite a kiss, but almost. Joni closes her eyes and nods again. The air settles warmly in the café.

They kiss for a long time in the cold, open air. Soft and slow. A kiss that goes nowhere. A kiss with no destination. Joni melts against him and her skin is so warm and vital under his fingertips. When he presses, Sebastian can hear her heartbeat and that closeness, that closeness, _god_, that is such a relief. The purest relief he’s ever felt.

The kiss wanes and she tucks her head against his chest. He wraps his arms tighter around her and rests his chin on the top of her head. Like they used to. It feels good to hold her like this, to know that she’s here, safe and sound maybe, just maybe, happy. Or almost happy.

A wind picks up, howling as it skitters between buildings and trees and she shivers in his arms. Always cold, always immune to her own warmth. It’s chilly, so chilly out, and the thought of her rattling alone in the damp, cold train is too much. “Let me call you a taxi.” He says, stroking her hair.

She laughs into the fabric of his shirt and pulls away, adjusting the strap of her bag. Her eyes are puffy from crying, but this feels like a ceasefire. Like a move back towards who they used to be. They have to dig up all these emotions, he knows, get their hands dirty. He’ll do it. She smiles a little and he thinks that maybe she will too. “A taxi huh?”

“Yeah,” he says, hands back in his pockets.

“Oh wow, big money now, huh?” He blushes. She looks off down the road. At those big glass office buildings down by the harbor. He wonders if she knows which building is his.“Do you love it?”

The question startles him out of his thoughts. “What?”

“The job you came here for. Is it everything you hoped it would be?”_ Was it worth it, _she doesn't have to ask. 

The question cuts him at a bias and he knows he isn’t doing an effective job of hiding the way it hurts. He hesitates. “I don’t know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading, you guys <3.


	10. Tug

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A real, homegrown clusterfuck

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Literally not even sure I know how to write anything other than angst.
> 
> TW: mention of previous sexual assault, panic attacks, drug abuse, vomit

“Your flowers make it,” Rita says, leaning against the gallery’s exposed brick wall, beer in hand. She’s got a leather jacket on over her relaxed jeans, a plain white t-shirt tucked into them. Looking today like the scrubbed down futch that Joni knows Leah likes, all Winona Ryder vibes. Joni’s doing her best to fit in, wearing a slinky black dress that clings tightly to her, her hair pinned messily up. Ankle boots that she fished out of the back of her closet, just the hint of a heel.

“Oh, I don’t know about that.” The gallery’s a box of a place just on the edge of the north side. One of many. Low ceilings and makeshift walls that bend slightly under the weight of Rita’s paintings. It’s packed. Unnervingly so and Joni imagines what a stampede it would be if everyone tried to leave at once. She breathes hard through her nose, trying to banish the thought.

“No, I’m serious.” Rita says, lazily lighting a cigarette, “they’re beautiful. You did such a beautiful job. Couldn’t dream up something better.” Joni flushes. It had been a joy, honestly, though she’d never really admit it to someone as effortlessly cool as Rita. But, Yoba, back in the dirt with those flowers. She’d felt so calm, almost buoyant. She wishes she could conjure some of that now. An older woman waves Rita over and, with a smile and quick wink, she pushes off the wall and heads that way.

Joni spots Leah in the group, spots a popular midtown gallery owner that she introduced her to when the show first started. Leah shoots Joni a shy, excited glance and Joni waves, smiling, trying to be encouraging.

Joni takes another deep breath and leans back against the exposed brick. Her tights catch on the prickly surface and she’s sure they’re going to be full of runs by the end of the night. She finishes her beer and sets it gingerly on the concrete floor. Rita’s flowers are lush. Up close, high def. Phallic stamens glistening with dewy precum, petals opening like the lips of a pussy. They’re horny paintings. Beautiful, undeniably erotic. Joni’s flowers, arranged beneath each canvas, look lush but almost demure in contrast.

It would all be so soothing on any other day, but dread has been working its way steadily inside of her since morning. A real bad brain day. Her head in a fog, fingers just a little shaky. She couldn’t really pinpoint the root of the feeling and she’d chalked it up to nerves about the show. But now, alone with her thoughts, the dread takes shape, gains clarity. Joni exhales and closes her eyes. The sounds around her rise up as she does, voices ebbing and flowing, loud footfalls on the concrete. A room of echoes. In the dark behind her own eyelids, his face becomes so clear. Snub nose, gingery hair flowing over his shoulders. Her breath catches in her throat. Joni sets her fingers there, chilled fingertips hunting for her pulse. _Where would Elliot go? _The question appears so suddenly in her head that it feels almost like a sign. A bad omen. Her eyes flutter open but the light is too bright now and she knocks her head gently back, letting them close again. She can hear Leah’s voice in the distance. She’s saying something about canvas. She’s laughing. She sounds nervous. _Elliot would go to Zuzu, right? Right? Where else would he go? Another small town? _No. She can only imagine him here. Maybe even _right here. _Her eyes fly open at the first touch and her whole body goes rigid. She expects to see Elliot standing in front of her, like she’d conjured him from the ether. But when her eyes adjust, she can see that it’s so much worse than that.

“Hey.” She’d forgotten the gap in his front teeth. She’d found that so charming at first, something she’d noticed right away. Her brain had washed that detail away in a sea of other, more pressing, details. The way his calloused hands felt on her stomach, the way he’d growled in her ear as he came. His hands are still calloused and they’re on her now, running down her bare arms. She yanks herself away from him and he holds his hands up in surrender, laughing a little, pink coloring his cheeks. ‘Sorry, sorry. You looked a little unsteady.”

“Oh, um.” Joni scans the room, searching for Leah, for Rita. For anyone. Her vision has gone hazy, she can’t make out individual faces. Except his. His is clear as day. This close she can smell the herby musk of his cologne and she can almost feel his bare chest against her back, feel him inside of her again. She wants to throw up. Why the fuck is he even here? The café isn’t that far away, she remembers. How could she have forgotten something like that?

He takes a few steps back and smiles. “Didn’t mean to spook you.” He nods behind him. “Cool art, huh?” He cocks his head. “This your stuff?”

Her heart is pounding so loudly in her ears that she can barely hear herself speak. “No, uh, I’m uh, I’m friends with the artist.”

“Cool, cool.” He bounces a little on the balls of his heat. “So, uh, I’ve seen you around. Like at the coffee shop where I work and stuff.” He grins. “Not to be weird, but uh, I’m not sure if we’ve actually met. You know, like, properly.”

It feels, for a moment, like the ground is slipping out from under her. _We’ve met, _she wants to scream. _We’ve fucked. _She wants to spit at him. _You raped me. _Her jaw is wired shut. He holds out his hand. “I’m Josh.” Did she know that? His name? She must have. Why wouldn’t she?

She takes his hand. It feels like nothing. Like an echo of an echo. Like all her nerves are dead. Sharp, intense vertigo rushes over her. “Joni.”

He keeps her hand in a tight grip, other hand digging in the pocket of his jeans. He produces a ballpoint pen and winks. “Now, I’m being a little forward here, I know.” Joni’s heart stutters. “But here’s my number.” The pen is chilly on her hand. “Maybe,” he grins again, “we could catch dinner sometime.”

“Yeah,” she hears herself say, “yeah, sure.” Joni has never felt more disgusted with herself in her whole life.

She is numb from the neck down, stumbles as she excuses herself to get some fresh air. How can he not remember her? How can he not remember the way her body ripped around him, the way she’d bucked in pain against him. She shakes her head, thoughts wild.

The cold air is a shock to her system as she barrels through the gallery’s front door. She needs it. She needs to wake back up. Joni holds herself tightly, her coat too thin to keep the chill out.

She’s always hated this part of town. It feels cut off from the sky, deep and damp, sunken down between the buildings. What she can see of the sky feels oppressively dark.

“You look like a ghost.” Joni honest to god jumps, yelps like a scared dog. But it’s only Leah, wrapped in a camo coat she got from Goodwill, looking at her sternly. It’s a loaded look, but Joni sloughs it off.

“Little overwhelming, isn’t it?” Joni nods back toward the gallery, her trembling hands hidden in the pockets of her coat. “In there, I mean.”

Leah snorts. “That’s an understatement. But it’s been well-received, I think. By all the right people.” She sniffs. “Whatever that means.”

“That’s great.”

Leah nods, looking suddenly wary. “So, um, I think I’m gonna be at her place tonight. Is that, uh…”

Joni manages a laugh. “You don’t have to ask me permission to fuck.”

Leah laughs too. “Duly noted. Just checking in. Didn’t want you to worry.” Leah narrows her eyes, hand heavy on Joni’s shoulder. “Seriously, are you okay?”

“Yeah, long day at work.” Joni starts in on the skin of her thumb. Her blood tastes metallic and salty. Her stomach growls. “I could really use a drink.”

She has four and when the awful feeling growing in her chest doesn’t dissipate, Joni weaves through the crowd to the bathroom. It’s a real half-assed affair. Grimy and tiny, but it’s quiet. And that’s all she needs. She heads to the furthest stall and sits on the toilet seat, legs bouncing. The bottle is at the bottom of her purse and her trembling fingers make finding it more of a task than it should be. It’s been so long since she’s taken one that some of the pills have been crushed to a fine powder at the bottom. She takes two.

Valium doesn’t pack quite the same punch as Xanax, but when she stands after a few minutes of trying to let it kick in, she knows, almost immediately, that she has fucked up royally. The walls wobble, the whole room rocking like a boat on rough seas. She stumbles out of the stall and when she finds that she can’t read the writing on the paper towel dispenser, the first tendrils of real panic race up her. She tries to steady herself on the sink, but the mirror distorts her reflection and now that panic rushes up in full force. She gags, her chest tight. She has to get the fuck out of here.

The gallery is a maze. As unfamiliar now as if she’d just walked in for the first time. Her body is getting away from her. She can’t find Leah. She can’t find anyone. The crowd parts for her as she passes, heading out into the night.

Her plan, though she’s not really in much of a state to make one, is to get something to eat. _Anything. _She just needs something to soak up the booze and the downers sloshing around in her empty stomach.

Joni makes it to the front of a 7/11 two blocks from the gallery before she has to stop, leaning heavily on the glass. Her body is so numb, like she’s been packed in cotton, that the touch doesn’t register at first. But his voice does. And the smell of that cologne. “Hey, you alright?”

She whirls around and finds Josh standing behind her, holding one of her arms tightly. “get away from me,” she manages, wriggling best as she can in his grasp.

He frowns, letting go. “What the hell? I was just trying to help, shit.”

“I need to find a payphone.” She stumbles down the sidewalk a few steps, before she has to lean against the wall again. Her chest hurts so badly that she holds her hand tightly against it, trying to knead the feeling out. She doesn’t have the stamina to keep at it, has to press both of her hands against the brick to stay upright.

“Shit, you are like way too fucked up.”

“Help me find a payphone, _please_.”

She tells him he can go once she makes the call, but he doesn’t budge, plopping down beside her on the curb. “How’d you get so fucked up anyway?” Joni ignores him, holding her head tightly in her hands, trying to stop the world from swaying. “You’re gonna be so sick in the morning, holy shit.” Joni shudders when Josh pats her too hard on the back. “Hey, but don’t sweat it, alright?” You’re gonna be just fine. I know I’ve had way worse. Used to get so blackout at parties that I’d just wake up, days gone.” He laughs softly to himself. 

Joni vaguely hears the sound of car brakes, the sound of footsteps. Sebastian is hauling her to her feet before she can even clock that it’s him. “Shit, Joni.” He smells so warm, so nice. She collapses into him. “Joni, what happened?”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Josh stands. “Who the fuck are you?”

Sebastian pauses, noticing him for the first time. “A friend. Who the fuck are you?”

Josh’s voice gets louder. “Maybe I’m a friend too and I’m not about to let her just go off with some random dude.” He makes to grab for Joni, but Sebastian pulls her away. The movement makes her head spin.

“Hey!” With her eyes closed, she can hear now that Josh sounds a little fucked up too. “Do you know this guy?”

Joni pushes a little off from Sebastian, hands still tight on his arms. “Yeah, he’s my…he’s my…” The world tilts and Joni sways.

“Fuck this. You could be anyone.” Josh grabs Joni by the arm, yanking her in his direction.

“Whoa, dude, fucking cut that out.” Sebastian holds a hand out in warning. “You’re gonna make her sick.” His voice drops a few octaves, that threatening tenor she’s only heard him use with one other person. “Fucking let go.”

Joni feels Josh release her, feels Sebastian wrap both arms around her. “This is bullshit. Who even are you?”

“I called him.” Joni says, struggling to enunciate. “This is the person I called. I’m fine. I’m going with him.” She can see Josh frown out of the corner of her eye, but he takes a couple steps back. “Thank you,” she says, even though it disgusts her, “for helping me find the payphone.”

Sebastian lets her lean heavily on him, guiding her toward the taxi’s open door. “Hey,” Josh shouts from the curb, “call me, alright?”

They sit quietly in the back of the taxi. Sebastian asks the driver to turn the radio down. He has one hand firmly on her knee, the other rubbing her back, whispering softly to her as the taxi winds down the streets.

Time stretches and contracts and after what could have been years or could have been seconds, the taxi slows to a stop and she feels Sebastian shift beside her, digging around for his wallet. She taps him on his thigh. “Sebastian.”

“Hmmm?” He’s leaning forward, paying the driver.

“I’m gonna puke.” He goes rigid. “I don’t know if…right now. I don’t know, but I want you to know that I’m gonna puke.”

“Not in my fucking cab, man.” The driver says, turning back to look at her.

“No worries man,” Sebastian says. “I got her.” He turns back to Joni. “That’s okay. Let’s just try and-“ She stumbles out of the taxi, landing hard on her knees, and pukes violently onto the sidewalk. “Oh shit.” Sebastian crouches down beside her, running his hand in soft circles on her back.

“I’m sorry.” She says, tears flowing freely now down her cheeks. 

“Don’t be sorry.” His voice is so soft, so gentle. She retches again. Just bile and little white bits of pills. “Have you eaten today? At all?” She shakes her head. “Shit, okay. Okay.”

He’s on the phone, lingering in the doorway between the kitchen and living room. The apartment feels huge. Like a whole house. Her vision is a little clearer now, the floor steady. “She took pills too,” He tells the phone. He turns the bottle over in his hand. “Valium.” Sebastian has a loud wall clock. The sound echoes in her head. “Okay, okay, yeah. I can do that.” He crouches down in front of her, phone cord pulled taut, phone pressed between his ear and his shoulder. He takes her hands gingerly in his, examining her fingertips. “No,” he tells the phone, “they’re not blue.” Sebastian releases her hands, tucking a few strands of hair behind her ear, smiling weakly. Then he turns his attention back to the phone. “And she’s like up and conscious.” He adjusts the phone on his shoulder, rubbing her knee. “Yeah.” He stands. “Thanks a million, Mar, seriously.”

Sebastian disappears into the kitchen, returning quickly with a glass of water. “You’re gonna need to drink this.” Her fingers fumble with the glass and when she tries to gulp the water, Sebastian pulls it back. “Slowly, slowly or you’re just going to throw it back up.” Joni sinks a little lower into the couch and does as he says. Sebastian unzips her boots, sliding them off her feet and setting them carefully down on his rug. “I’m gonna take your tights off,” he tells her, pushing her dress up around her hips. He tilts his head to meet her eyes. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah.” Joni’s voice is thin, tired.

He nods at her. “Keep drinking, okay?” He rolls her tights down her legs, fingers warm on her bare skin. He lifts each leg, one at a time, easing them off. “We should get your dress off too. Get you cleaned up.”

The steam helps. The hot water. Her head’s a little clearer. Pounding, but clearer. She presses it against his bare chest, listening for his heartbeat, lets the water roll over both their bodies. He runs his hands up and down her arms, whispering sweet nonsense into the crown of her head. A wave of nausea rises up in her again, tinged with terror. She pushes away from him, stumbling out of the tub to throw up again, this time in his toilet. Sebastian follows her out, but she’s quickly on her feet, heading toward the sink. “That one was just nerves, I think.” She splashes some water on her face. She feels a lot clearer now, her vision less blurred, her body less out of control.

“Okay.” He rubs her back. “Take a deep breath. You’re safe okay. You’re safe.” 

He dresses her in one of his shirts and a pair of gym shorts. His fingers linger on her hips, up her ribs. Just soft touches

He leads her to bed and once she’s under his thick blanket, brushes her hair from her forehead. “I’m gonna be out on the couch okay? Just call if you need anything.“

“The couch?” She asks, blearily. “Why?” He stands frozen in the doorway. “Come stay with me, please. Get into bed.” She can’t keep her eyes open anymore and, for a moment, she thinks he’s just ignored her. Then the bed dips under his weight and soon she can feel his arm snake around her middle.

“Get some rest.” He says, breath hot on the shell of her ear. She squirms. “You can sleep. I’m gonna make sure you’re okay, don’t worry.” Joni fumbles blindly for him, fingers finding his lips. He kisses them softly. “Don’t worry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, you guys <3


	11. Yolk*

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian and Joni make promises.

He’s been awake for hours by the time she starts to squirm in his arms, moaning softly. It’s been hours, but he hasn’t budged, worried that once she wakes she’ll want nothing to do with him, that maybe this time really will be the last time she lets him touch her. And he’s trying hard, _hard, _not to let the way she had him hold her all night cloud what he’s going to do next. He needs to be reasonable. Needs to not overstep the careful peace they’ve brokered. Joni moans again, rolling over until the tip of her nose brushes his bare chest. Her hair spills messily over his pillow and she smiles softly in her half-sleep. He needs to keep his head on straight. He needs to _focus. _His name is soft on her tongue, fingers searching for his pulse, fingers gentle on his neck. Sebastian holds onto her like she might disappear. Like she might run. Or worse. He’s trying not to think too hard about what’s brought her here. About the way she looked last night. The way she sounded. About the man who’d been with her. It’s easy when she wraps her arms around his middle and the part of him, that logical part, who wants to remind her that they were trying space, that they were easing in, goes so quiet it barely exists. Joni tucks her feet between his calves, seeking his heat. He pulls the duvet back up over their shoulders. A nest. A place to hide.

Her nose hits his navel and he exhales in the steam. Sebastian’s not sure how they got here. Not really. Both of them nude in the shower, her on her knees. He remembers telling her that she didn’t have to, that she didn’t need to _do _anything for him. She smirked a little – still a little unsteady, still a little green – and took his soft cock in her mouth. All the blood rushed from his head, all the sense. He cums so hard, so fast, cradling Joni’s head in his hands. He helps her up, their bodies suspended together as the water rushes over them. When he reaches back to shut the water off, the air is so still around them he can hear their heartbeats. Almost synched up.

She makes a soft sound when he pulls her up around his hips, carrying her to the sink. “What are you doing?” She asks, eyes half-lidded. She lays her head on the bathroom mirror. Joni tastes like the sweetest thing he’s ever eaten. He feasts on her like a starving man.

She hefts herself up onto his kitchen counter like she’s been here a hundred times before and it would be a lie to say that didn’t hit him right in the chest. To see her here, to see her _comfortable _here. In his place. _Where she belongs, _his traitorous brain whispers to him.

He hands her two Tylenol, checks her temperature with the inside of his wrist. She looks alright. A little peckish, a little tired, but so much better than last night. Yoba, and that’s all he needs, all he wants in the whole world.

He cracks a few eggs, listening to the comforting way they sizzle in the skillet, tosses in a couple handfuls of leftover chopped vegetables. Joni leans her head against the tile, watching him work. Sebastian breaks the yolks with his spatula then sighs, looking over at her. “So.” She cocks her head. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Which part?”

He sets the spatula down on the counter and turns the stove down, sighing again. “Well, I guess we could start with what the fuck happened last night and, uh, if we get that all settled maybe we could move on to how we keep fucking even though we aren’t together.”

Joni averts her eyes. “Or we could just eat.”

“Or we could just eat.” Sebastian concedes, huffing out a strained laugh. He plates up the eggs and passes her one, leaning against the counter opposite where she’s sitting. The afternoon light shimmers on her long, long legs, warms her hair like a halo. She looks beautiful. But tired. Thin. Sebastian clears his throat. “Speaking of: what’s with the eating thing?”

She glances up at him. “What eating thing?”

“How you don’t seem to be doing it.”

The tendons in her neck pulse, but she still manages a smile. “You’re asking the real hard-hitting questions today, Sebastian.”

“_Joni._”

“What’s with the empty apartment thing?”

He scoffs. “Alright, consider it dropped.”

Joni sets her plate down beside her on the counter. “I don’t want you to feel like you need to take care of me. You don’t need to be responsible for me.”

“I don’t mind taking care of you.” Sebastian’s on a roll, bulldozing onward. “So who was that guy?”

Joni frowns. “No one.” He gives her a hard look, but she just shrugs, deflecting him. “Seriously. No one. Just some guy I met at the art show.”

He takes a sip of coffee and fumbles in the pockets of his sweats for a cigarette. “Seemed like an asshole.”

Her eyes widen. Just slightly, but he knows her so well, knows that something is happening behind those pretty eyes of hers. That darkness just churning. “Yeah, a real asshole.”

He doesn’t push, not on that at least. But he is in the mood to be pushy. Sebastian nods toward her plate. “More.”

She cocks her head. “More?”

“You heard me.”

“What are you my mom now?”

“You’re the one who wanted to _just eat._” Joni laughs, rolling her eyes, but, to his relief, she picks her plate back up.

“This place is crazy.” She says between bites.

“What? My apartment?”

She nods. “What did you do? Put ‘opposite of basement’ in the search engines to find it?”

He can’t hide his grin. “You’re awful punchy for a girl who just had a night like the one you had.”

“You’re awful sensitive for a guy living in a luxury apartment.”

His smile breaks across his face and he feels light. Despite everything, he feels light. “There’s a gym in the basement you know. Bunch of corporate assholes running like gerbils on the treadmills all morning.”

“Sounds like your scene. Pool?”

He nods. “Up on the roof. Atrium pool. Open year-round.”

Joni whistles. Her smile is such a relief. “Hot tub?”

Sebastian pauses. “I, uh, I don’t actually know.”

“Are you trying to tell me you haven’t been up there.” He shrugs. She looks at him incredulously. “Are you serious?” She laughs. “You’re doing it wrong, my man.”

He crosses the distance between them, his fingers ghosting over her jaw. He can’t bring himself to touch her. His mouth was between her thighs only an hour before and he can’t bring himself to touch her. “Maybe I need someone to show me how to do it right.” She looks at him, eyes shimmering. Expectant. Nervous. He’s toeing a line they’ve drawn together in the sand. He can’t take it another minute. This limbo. He walks over the line, fingertips making contact with the line of her jaw. “Are we together?”

Her eyes waver, hands so tight on the counter that her knuckles have gone white. “Are we?”

“Is that a no?”

She looks away from him and he can tell that this is too much. That she’s too tired. That whatever happened the night before is still hanging heavily on her. “That’s a…” She swallows hard. “Listen, I-“

“I get it.” He interrupts.

She narrows her eyes at him. “What?”

“I get it. I can be patient.” Joni takes a stalling sip of her coffee. Her body is so still, but he knows her too well, knows that her mind is racing.

Silence hangs between them for what feels like an eternity and, finally, Sebastian turns back to his plate, setting it in the sink with a clink. He admits defeat. Joni advances. “I’m not seeing anyone else.” He glances up at her. “I’m not being with…anyone else. And I…don’t really see that changing.” He nods. There’s a million things he wants to say but he can tell a concluding statement when he sees one. She pushes the eggs around on her plate, makes a show of taking a couple more bites then puts it down beside her to drink more coffee.

“Um,” he sets his palms flat on the counter beside her. “So I’m just gonna say this once okay and then I’m never gonna say it again.”

She frowns. “Okay…”

“Don’t…don’t do that again.” She frowns looking away. “I’m serious. Please. _Please. _Promise me._” _She lets him takes her hands, lets him squeeze them. Their foreheads touch. “_Please._”

Her eyes flutter closed. “Okay, okay.” He squeezes again. “I promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading <3


	12. Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joni comes clean then gets an unexpected call from the Valley

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh oh

“Rita told me what happened.” Joni freezes in the doorway. Leah is waiting for her on their threadbare couch, looking every bit like a parent waiting up after their teenage daughter flew the coop. It’s late afternoon. Storm clouds have moved in and the apartment is bathed in the artificial glow of their lamps.

Joni tenses reflexively then makes an effort to release her shoulders. She has nothing to hide. She schools her face, tries not to look like she might throw up again, like she hadn’t just been eaten out for _days _by a man who isn’t really her boyfriend no matter how badly she wants him to be, no matter how afraid that makes her. Her body is a storm. She has to steady herself on the couch. “What happened?”

Leah’s look could cut her in two. “Stop. Stop it. The jig is so motherfucking up.” She takes a swig of the beer she’s been holding lazily in one hand. “Sebastian called me. Says you puked for an hour. Could barely stand when he got to you.”

“He just called and told you that!?”

Leah narrows her eyes. “No, he called to tell that you were at his place, but I can be very persuasive.”

“God, so everybody’s a snitch.” Goose comes padding into the room, drawn by the raised voices. He’s gotten so big in the last year and when Joni leans down to scoop him up, he’s heavy in her arms. He’s soft too and his heft grounds her, his warmth nice. She wonders, suddenly, if Sebastian misses him. Then wonders, peering curiously down at her cat, if Goose misses Sebastian.

“Everybody _cares _about you.”

Joni frowns. “Rita barely knows me.” Goose kneads the sweater Joni’s got over her dress from the night before. It’s Sebastian’s. Thick and so big on Joni that she swims in it. She rocks him slowly, back and forth on her feet. His eyes slowly close, mouth just a little open, the sharp points of his teeth just barely peeking out.

“So who was that guy?”

Joni freezes. Goose opens one eye and yowls, like he can feel the energy in the room shifting. “What guy?”

“I said cut it out. Rita says she saw some guy talking to you and then you bolted. Who the hell was he?”

Joni wants to say that he was no one. She wants to lie like she had to Sebastian, but there’s something about the way Leah’s looking at her. All those lazy afternoons, all those long nights together, they come flooding back to her. If anyone should know, if anyone can help her hold this, it’s Leah. “He raped me.”

Leah goes stony, gulping so loud that Goose squirms in Joni’s arms. Leah stands, free hand clenching and unclenching, jaw so tight her teeth must ache. Her voice is quiet, heavy. The whole apartment has slowed down, dust motes in the air quivering like they too are waiting to see what will happen next. “He what?”

“Not last night.”

Leah blinks. Once, twice, over and over. Like she’s trying to understand. “But…”

Joni takes a deep breath. “He was, um, he was one them. The ones I told you about. The ones from before I came to the Valley.”

Leah swallows hard. “Fuck.” She sets the beer down on their old, scratched up coffee table. “Fuck. Let me…” She runs her hands almost violently through her hair, messing her braid. “Let me put some soup on or something. Let me…” She trails off into the kitchen.

“Why have you been going there so much anyway?” Leah breaks the heel off the baguette they’d scrounged up. It’s a few hours from stale, but they’re covering it in honey, in jam, in mustard, cutting chunks off a few heels of cheese, making little sandwiches. Leah slipped a pack of prosciutto into her bag after her last shift at the restaurant and Joni’s devouring it, washing it down with a coffee so thick with sweetener it makes her teeth zing. “To the coffee shop, I mean.” Leah over-brewed her coffee, kept it black, Joni can smell how bitter it is from her spot across the table. She only drinks it like that when she’s trying to focus.

“I don’t know.” Joni replies honestly. She nips a bit of honey from her thumb, lets it melt sweetly on her tongue. Her blood thrums with sugar. “Same reason you were looking up Kel, I guess.”

Leah opens her mouth to argue but apparently thinks better of it, settling back into the chair, crossing her arms over her chest. “Sick curiosity?”

“Masochism?” Joni offers back.

Leah takes another chunk of bread and scrapes it into the nearly empty jar of jam, leaving crumbs before she plops it into her mouth. “You should have told me.”

“About the coffee shop?”

“No. I mean, sure. Yes, probably. But you should have told me he was at Rita’s show.”

Joni breaks off a chunk of the bread. She keeps it in her cheek until it softens. It disgusts her. She does it again. “Not sure what that would have accomplished.”

Leah levels her coffee cup at her. “We would have gotten his ass out of there.”

Joni finishes her coffee. A sweet sludge is waiting at the bottom and she tips the cup nearly upside down, craning her neck. Her stomach is still raw from the night before and the sugar hits it hard. Joni grimaces. “I’d rather not make a scene, you know?”

Leah sighs. “Point him out to next time, okay?”

Joni raises an eyebrow. “Next time?”

“That show had shit for publicity. If he ended up there, it’s because he knows somebody. I bet he goes to a lot of art shit in the city.” Joni shivers. She doesn’t want to think about it. Her brain is still fried, everything still so raw. The calm that Sebastian so carefully coaxed back into her has vanished “We can’t have people like that in our scene. People should _know._”

The decision is easy, really. Barely a decision at all. What a nightmare it would be. All that attention. All that _danger. _No, Joni isn’t going to draw any more attention to it, not like that. She’ll keep her head down. She’ll be smarter, but she won’t out him. The risk outweighs the reward. A realization hits her hard and she looks up at Leah. “I need you to promise me something.” Leah cocks an eyebrow. “Do _not_ tell Sebastian who he is.”

Leah frowns. “You didn’t tell Sebastian?”

“Please.”

“Joni!”

“Please!”

Leah shakes her head, breathing hard out of her nose. “Fine.” She raps her nails angrily on the table. “I won’t tell him.” They lock eyes. “_This time. _But I swear to god, Joni, if he shows up again. If this becomes a thing...” Joni kneads at her temples and Leah lowers her voice, almost a whisper. “I’ll do what I should have done with Elliot.”

Joni tries to shake the cold off her as she makes her way up the building’s winding stairs. She’s got a plastic bag wound tightly around her wrist, heavy with joja colas, a bag of cat litter tucked under her other arm. It was nice to get out in the fresh air, even as dark clouds hung low in the sky, the air electric with a coming storm.

She’s still a little woozy, her mouth cottony, temples pounding, but she feels so much better now. She feels taken care of. The thought makes her chest warm and she can feel Sebastian’s touch on her skin. So soft, so gentle. Like home. _Like home. _As soon as he’d pulled her up from that curb, all the fear in her unfurled. The memory is as barbed as it is soft. A reminder that time is ticking, that maybe he won’t wait forever. The dull fear that the next time she sees him, someone else might be at his side. She tries not to think about it, because another fear, of watching him leave again, of watching him discard her so easily all over again, is just as strong.

Leah whips around the corner on the stairs, tucking her work shirt into a pair of jeans. “Home at three.” She tells Joni, before disappearing around the next corner. “Oh!” She pops her head back around and Joni stops. “Shane called.”

Joni checks her watch. “Really?” It’s later than he usually calls. And besides, they’ve already had their monthly conversation about the state of the farm. “Did he say what for?”

“Nope.” Leah holds a hair tie in her teeth as she rakes her long hair back. “Get some sleep, yeah?”

Shane picks up on the first ring and Joni isn’t ready, stutters a hello. “Hey.” Joni frowns. His voice is expectant. His voice is loaded.

“Hi,” she says again, “is everything okay?” Tendrils of guilt squeeze at her chest, her mind conjuring up all kinds of horrible things. A field on fire. A shattered grave.

“Yep! I was just uh…” he pauses and Joni’s heart starts to pound. “I was just wondering when you were gonna be back in the Valley?” Joni exhales, relieved. He sounds too cheery for there to be something wrong. He would tell her right away. She knows that. She trusts him with that. Joni brushes her hair off her face and leans back. Her mind starts to wander, heading back toward the harbor, toward Sebastian’s fishbowl apartment. All that glass. All that empty space. “Joni?”

“Oh, um, yeah. I’m actually not sure, Shane. Is something up?”

“No, no. Everything’s great.” She hears him click his tongue against his teeth. “Listen, uh, do you know if you’re free late February?” Joni fidgets with the pen they keep beside the phone, running the smooth tip over her fingertips. She should call Sebastian after this. They should…talk. They _need _to talk. Stop dancing around all of this. Maybe she can just lay it all out. Be honest with him. With herself. “Joni? You still there?”

“Yeah, sorry. Um, February? I’m probably free, yeah.“ She hesitates, realizing that Shane has been leading her down a path that she doesn’t recognize, that she hasn’t been paying attention at all. “Why?”

“There’s a gridball game in Zuzu actually. My buddy got me tickets and I’ve, um, I’ve actually got an extra one. Would you, uh, want to come with me?” Joni taps her fingers on the table. Would Sebastian answer this late? Probably. Definitely. But he might have an early start in the morning. Another barb. That she doesn’t know what his life looks like. That she only has snapshots. “Joni?”

“Hey, yes, sorry.”

“Do you have like bad service in your place or something?”

Joni swallows hard. She can’t keep her thoughts straight, can’t pay attention. “No, no. Just been a long day. I’m zoning out.”

“Oh.”

“So, um, gridball?”

“Do you want to go?”

“In February?” That's an eternity away. A whole lifetime.

“Yes.”

“Um, sure. Sure, why not?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading <3


	13. Fright*

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They’re messy. The messiest, even.

Beth’s apartment is as shitty as it’s ever been and, Yoba, he loves it. Yoba, it’s so damn nice. He likes the way the wallpaper’s peeling, likes the way the floorboards are a little warped. From mold or water or whatever the fuck else. There’s something real about the apartment that makes him feel real in turn. His little glass box all the way in midtown still makes him feel a little like a robot, like a fluttering line of code, even as Joni’s energy still lingers. The spot where she’d sat on the counter still bathed in a light somehow warmer than the rest that filters into the apartment. _Joni._ His heart travels to his throat, beating loudly at the base of his ears. Louder even than the bargain bin spooky sounds cd Beth managed to scrounge up and cranked to the loudest volume on her stereo.

Because even though it’s familiar – the crowd, the scene, the feeling – Sebastian’s a little on edge, butterflies in his stomach like he’s a teenage boy. Because Joni said she might be here. An off-handed remark really. During one of the quiet, often meandering phone calls they’ve been having lately. They talk like vampire bats, only at night, timid squeaks that are barely language, barely words.

Sebastian weaves through the dense crowd in Beth’s narrow hallway, choking on the noxious smell of the smoke machine they’ve got churning away in the kitchen. He brushes past sequins and glitter, fake blood and black polyester. When he spots Leah by the front door he stumbles, catching himself against the wall. He takes a deep breath on the approach.

“Hey.” Leah glances up at him. “Long time no see.”

She turns, hand on her hip, one side of her mouth quirked almost menacingly up. “On no.” She wags her cup at him. “Don’t you ‘long time no see’ me, Sebastian Kouris. You really are a dead man. It is by the grace of Yoba that I haven’t just laid you out.”

He laughs because what else can he do? “God knows I’d deserve it. Am I right in assuming you’re all caught up?”

“Someone had to talk Joni off the ledge, asshole.” Sebastian flinches. Teasing or no, it hits close to the bone. And maybe Leah can sense that because she softens and pulls him into a stiff hug. “You know that humility of yours really is the only reason you haven’t gotten knocked the fuck out.” Sebastian can’t help but grin then, remembering all the times in high school his mouth _had _gotten him knocked out.

“I like the costume,” he says, taking a few steps back to get a better look at her. “Are you…” He glances up to meet her eyes, “a mime?”

Leah sighs. “I’m Marcel Marceau.”

“And he is…?”

She groans. “The world’s most famous silent street performer.”

“So a mime?”

She raises an eyebrow. “You’re on thin ice.”

Sebastian chuckles and takes a sip of his drink. The punch is either really alcoholic or totally dry, but it tastes like diabetic shock. Joni’ll be crazy for it. He takes a deep breath. Speaking of. “So, is, uh, is Joni with you?”

Leah cocks her head at him. “No, I showed up all on my own to a party where I know no one.”

“You know me,” he teases.

Leah laughs despite herself then pokes him hard in the chest. He huffs in surprise. Her eyes are fiery. “Taking fucking care of her, okay? Don’t fucking break her heart again, you incredible piece of shit, or I _will _lay you out.” Sebastian can’t breathe. Did Joni say something to Leah? About getting back together? He takes a long sip of his drink, praying that it _is _alcoholic. That it’ll take some of the edge off. Leah nods toward the kitchen window closest to the balcony door. “She’s over there.”

Sebastian narrows his eyes, searching. When he sees her, he sucks in a sharp, ragged breath. “Oh my fucking god.”

“Yeah, her costume is scandalous so I’d hurry up if I was you. Someone else might scoop her up.”

Her tits are out. It’s the first thought he has once he breaks away from Leah. The only thought he has as he rakes his gaze down her body. Her incredible fucking rack is just out. _Thank fucking Yoba. _

As he winds his way through the crowd toward her, he sees that they aren’t actually _out _out. That she’s got peachy colored pasties on her nipples. But that perky, bouncy flesh is so goddamn on display and he’s suddenly ravenous.

“Hey,” he croons, sidling up beside her. He says a silent prayer that he still knows how to be cool. That, despite everything, he can still impress her.

She jumps a little, but once she realizes that it’s just him, pounds him hard in the chest. “Don’t sneak up on me! You scared the shit out of me!”

He leans down until his mouth is beside her ear and does his best Count Dracula voice. “Happy Spirit’s Eve, mua ha ha” She rolls her eyes, trying to stifle a smile. Sebastian leans back to take all of her in. She’s got a white bed sheet wrapped around her hips like a toga and long, black evening gloves that go up past her elbows. “So, besides very fucking hot, what are you supposed to be?”

He likes the way his voice makes her blush, likes even more how she tries to hide it by rolling her eyes again. “I’m Venus de Milo.”

“Ah,” Sebastian says, sagely. He leans on the wall beside her and hunts his pockets for a cigarette. “Of course. _Obviously, _I know what that is.”

She scoffs teasingly. “It’s probably the _most _famous Greek statue, you Neanderthal.” She elbows him lightly. “And you’re even Greek.” She wags her finger at him. “For shame.”

He grins, taking a long drag. “I thought only Leah was allowed to get offended by her obscure costumes.” At that, Joni laughs loudly into her cup. “Well, whatever it is, I like it.” Sebastian takes a steadying drag of his cigarette, ashing it half-smoked on the windowsill. He moves slowly, so she can pull away, but instead she leans in, letting him run his fingers along her hairline. Sebastian’s never seen her hair up like this, pulled up like in on a Greek vase, two pale ribbons crisscrossing her scalp. “You look amazing.”

She shrugs, trying to be nonchalant. “You’re not the only who thinks so.”

Sebastian looks out into the crowd, noticing for the first time how many men have been eyeing Joni, now looking at him with some combination of resentment and desire. “I don’t doubt it.” She blushes again and it really is the prettiest thing he’s ever seen. He shifts a little closer to her, until their shoulders touch and the contact makes them both exhale, relaxing into the touch. “I should have looked for you here from the start,” he says, nodding toward the window, “you’re such a cat.”

She elbows him, laughing, then pauses, looking down his body. “You’re wearing a costume.” She says, frowning. Joni looks up, quirking one eyebrow. “Maybe?”

“Good eye.” He winks. 

She shakes her head, trying not to let him make her smile. “So what are you supposed to be then, Sebastian?”

“You can’t tell?” He teases.

She cocks her head at him. “I’m not sure. The plaid shirt is throwing me off. Like I’ve never seen you in one but maybe you’re like entering a new phase in your life.”

Sebastian chuckles. “What? The plaid shirt phase?” Joni shrugs, smiling shyly. “I’m a lumberjack.”

Joni snorts. “I think you’d need a beard to pull that costume off.”

“Would you like me with a beard?” He didn’t mean for his voice to sound gravely like that, needy like that.

Her eyes flit up to look at him. “I’d like you in anything.” The party fades away, the room turning hazy on the edges. The energy between them is so taut it might just snap. Joni’s gaze lingers on him, tongue darting out to swipe across her lower lip. “You look really good too.” He opens his mouth, but no words come out. She reaches for him.

The door rattles on its hinges. Her back beats against it with each thrust, his hands on it to try and shield her skin from the rough wood. She’s got all her weight on him, legs wrapped around his waist as he fucks her. Joni lays her head back against the door, the long line of her neck exposed to his hungry mouth and he descends. Biting and kissing, licking up it like an animal. The muscles in his arms are bulging with the effort it’s taking to hold her up, to fuck her against the bathroom door, his jeans in a heap around his ankles.

He picks up his pace and her tits start to bounce. He growls low in his throat and takes one nipple between his teeth. She gasps, calling out his name. Joni can’t quite get her footing like this, has to just lean back and let him lead. And _that _seems to be doing it for both of them. She’s so sloppy wet that it’s started to drip down his thighs, his pubic hair drenched in her. “God, look at you.” He slides his hands down to cup her ass and hefts her into a different position, a deeper position. She yelps, holding tighter onto his shoulders. “Look how turned on you are, _fuck.” _

Joni moans in his ear. “You’re one to, oh _fuck, _you’re one to talk.” She pitches forward as he rolls his hips at a different angle, brushing up against the most sensitive spot inside of her. “Fu-u-u-uck.”

He does it again, then again, even though the position is making the muscles in his thighs tremble under the strain. But, fuck, the idea of making her squirt while the party rages on outside is enough to keep him going. “I’m gonna make you cum so hard you can’t see straight.” He picks up the pace again, whispering filth in her ear. “I’m gonna make you scream.”

Joni digs her nails roughly into the skin of shoulders, bearing down hard, and he can’t stop his orgasm from rolling brutally over him. His hips stutter as he finishes inside of her. He pants against her shoulder for a beat, before lowering her to her feet. Sebastian gets down onto his knees without a thought, lifting one of her thighs over his shoulder, opening her back up. She shudders when he takes her clit between his lips. He can taste himself, taste the way their bodies have mixed and his softening cock jolts at the thought of it. _Keep going, _he whispers into her flesh, _cum until you’re shaking. _He wants to suspend her in pleasure. To never let her go, to never let her feel anything but bliss, but safety. “Oh god,” she fists her hands in his hair, “oh my god.” It sounds like I love you. Until it doesn’t.

Her orgasm has barely passed over her when she pulls violently away from him, pulling her panties roughly up her legs. Joni’s eyes are dark like they were the night of the Luau and Sebastian knows he has to do something fast, has to do something _now. _But it’s too late. She pulls the toga back up around her hips and slips out of the bathroom. No. _Hell no. _Sebastian follows her out, bumping hard into people as he fights through the crowd. He calls her name but his voice is muted by the music, by the din of the people around him. His fly is undone, belt hanging loose from his jeans. He couldn’t care less.

Sebastian catches up with her on the sidewalk and grabs her rougher than he means to. But he can’t let her run out into the night. Not again. “I’m not letting you go.”

She’s pulsing with angry energy. All motion. Hissing and spitting like a feral cat. She spins out of his grip. “You already let me go!” She starts down the sidewalk again, but this time just a little slower.

“What about making this work?” He shouts after her, starting down toward her. She shakes her head, hands carding through her own hair, scattering her updo. “Joni!” He barely recognizes his own voice. “What about making this work!?” She starts to walk faster and he breaks into a jog, terrified now that she’ll disappear into the city, that the last thing he’ll ever see is her bare back, walking away from him. “Please. Please! Just stop. Stop for one second. Please!”

She stops so quickly that Sebastian nearly runs into her. “I can’t. This is too much. It’s-“ She spins to face him, then freezes, eyes widening. “You’re crying.” He recoils from her. But sure enough, when he reaches up to touch his cheeks, they’re wet with tears. “You…I don’t remember if I’ve ever…” Her voice is far away, eyes searching his face. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen you cry.”

He wipes furiously at his eyes. “It’s fine. I’m fine.”

“No,” she closes the distance between them, her fingers light on his face, “no, it’s really not.” She wipes his tears away with her thumbs, eyes so soft he can barely stand to look at them. He pulls quickly away from her, unbuttoning his shirt. Her eyes dart. “What are you doing?”

He pulls it off and sets it across her shoulders, pulling it closed over her chest. Goosebumps race up his bare skin “You’ll get cold.”

It’s a neutral place, he guesses. Or at least as neutral as they can get at almost two in the morning on Spirit’s Eve. He figures that’s why she wanted to come here. Or maybe she just wants the water. The steam. The humidity. He watches her soak it in like a mermaid. And maybe that’s what she is. Fragile and fearsome. Lost on dry land, expected to find a way to breathe. Maybe he’s a mermaid too.

He lights a cigarette and leans back on the wicker lounge. One of many, flanked by tropical plants. The lights are out and the moon reflects eerily through the atrium onto the pool’s surface. The pool reflects it back, the whole room undulating with watery light. Sebastian’s eyes are tight from crying, but at least she’s still here. That’s all he can ask for. She looks back toward him, like she can hear his thoughts, then resumes her wandering. Barefoot along the patterned tiles. She rocks her hips slowly back and forth, sheet swishing around her long legs. She is so beautiful. Ethereal in this soft light. But he can almost see the pain wafting off her. His, most of all. What he’s caused. The lit cigarette falls from his fingers, hissing when it hits the tile. He stands, footsteps echoing in the room. It’s the only sound beside the quiet sloshing of the pool.

Joni lets him wrap his arms around her middle, lets him rest his chin on her shoulder. She pulls away just as quickly. He holds his arms out, reaching for her. Always reaching. Joni turns, face unreadable, then shimmies out of the sheet. It falls with a whoosh. She slides her panties down her legs until she’s naked in the moonlight. “What are you doing?’

“Going for a swim.”

He swallows hard. “The whole building has access to this pool.”

“And?”

He looks behind him at the door, sure that someone will come in, see them like this. But no one does. The room is still until her splash breaks that stillness. Without thinking, he walks to the edge of the pool, watching her.

She glides backward, eyes on him, water rippling over her bare body. She doesn’t have to say anything. He knows what she wants. His belt clacks against the tile when his jeans hit the ground. He pulls his socks off, tossing them behind him, before sliding his underwear off too. And then, like sailor crashing onto a rocky shore, he follows her siren call into the water. The water is warm as it glides over his skin.

They circle slowly around each other for a long time. Not saying anything. Not touching, Water splashes around their bodies. A lone ambulance calls from the street so many floors below them. Its sound distorted by how high up they are, by all the glass. “You know I love you, right?” Joni says it so quietly, he almost misses it.

His heart starts to pound and, on instinct, he swims toward her. “You do?” He whispers even though they're alone.

She stands up in the pool, water sliding down the pink points of her nipples. “I never stopped. Not once.” He reaches for her. “That’s why this hurts so much. That’s why I’m so afraid.”

Their hands find each other. Sebastian squeezes her fingers. “If I could take your pain away, I would. I would bear it all.”

She pulls him toward her, rests her head on his shoulder. Their bodies bob together in the crystalline water. “If you’re hurting, then I am. Nothing in this world hurts like your pain.” He holds onto her like she’s the only thing in the world that can keep him upright, like if he lets go his heart will stop beating. And it feels like that, as their hearts beat almost in tandem, their bare chests pressed so tightly together. They both smell like salt, faintly like chlorine. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading <3


	14. Patchwork

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The universe tilts again in Joni's favor.

Joni checks the paper a second time, then one more time after that. Trying to make sure that this house is the right one. She looks down the tightly packed row. They’re a line of chain-link fences and overgrown gardens. A few of them have minivans out front on the street, the cars like giants beside the narrow, cracked sidewalk. She spots a swing set a few houses down and a strange, dull feeling sits in her chest. She wants nothing to do with _that. _

Lydia’s handwriting is neat, uniform, surprisingly without flourish. She’d written her address on one of the shop’s shipping receipts a few days before and Joni worried the paper so much with her fingers that the first two numbers have faded. Still, she thinks this is probably the place.

Joni’s never been to this part of the city before. So far out on the A-line that it’s practically in the suburbs. The very last stop on the train. It sits squat in the shadow of the city’s looming skyscrapers, houses popping up like little mushrooms at the base of a great, old-growth forest. Uniform in shape and size but each a little different. Lydia’s – if this is actually the right place – is brick. The only one on her block that isn’t painted a bright color, rimmed in white awnings like the frosting on a cake. No, Lydia’s house has a much different feeling. Wrought iron windows and dense, snaking vines. The evening sun casts warm orange light in geometric rays as it sets behind Zuzu’s tallest buildings and a tall patch of sunflowers on the lawn fluoresce when the light touches them. Joni spots the reddening leaves of a vast strawberry patch tucked beneath the porch steps and, for the first time, feels the faintest tinge of homesickness for the farmhouse.

A kid no older than seven races by on a bike, a group of others in hot pursuit, kicking up gravel as they pass. Joni moves quickly out of the way, the metal fence digging into her palms as she leans against it. She checks her paper again, glancing from the worn numbers on the house and back again. She tucks it into the pocket of her jeans and takes a deep breath.

Lydia’s front gate creaks when Joni tests It and she imagines whole generations of neighborhood kids must have called her a witch. “Took you long enough,” a voice calls from the walk. Lydia smiles, wrapped in a silky robe, long jeweled earrings glittering in the porchlight. “I thought you were going to bolt.” Joni smiles back. A warm feeling settles in her chest and she wonders, traitorously, if this is maybe what it would have been like if her mother had lived.

The whole house is cast in low light and its vaulted ceilings and wood-paneled walls make Joni feels like she’s tucked herself into a bird’s nest. The wicker furniture and patchwork quilts only add to the effect. The place smells like warmth. Like the inside of a craft store on the first day of Autumn. Cinnamon and fallen leaves and pumpkin scented candles. Lydia’s robe is black, a swirling floral pattern cast in mother of pearl up the back. Her gunmetal hair is pulled up, secured with a jeweled clip. She looks over her shoulder as they head down the hallway. “You look like you’ve had a long weekend.”

“That bad, huh?” Joni tries to catch her reflection in any of the glass cabinets that line the hallway, but all she can see is a blur.

Lydia has a rich laugh, full and wise. “You look fine. But it’s a look I know.” She stops, ushering Joni into the soft wooden cocoon of her kitchen. “Why don’t we get you something to drink? Dinner will be ready in a few minutes.” Joni cranes her neck to get a better look at the pots bubbling on the stove. “Nothing special.” Lydia says when she notices she’s lost Joni’s attention. “Just spaghetti. Sauce from a jar. But it’s food. And a thank you.” She looks at her seriously. “For all your hard work at the store.”

Joni’s on her second plate of pasta when she lets it slip about her mom. In a crass joke no less. Something about wanting to fucking kill herself after that last long inventory they did at the bookstore. Something about how it runs in the family. It’s the kind of wildly inappropriate joke Joni used to tell in high school when all she wanted was attention, any kind. It’s a shock to hear it come out of her mouth now, with her boss of all people. Lydia gives her a long look but doesn’t otherwise acknowledge it.

But once they’ve settled in for coffee in Lydia’s living room, fire crackling in her stone fireplace, the older woman fixes Joni with a stern look. “So you grew up with your dad, then? Just the two of you?”

Joni swallows hard, coughing a little when her coffee goes down wrong. “Uh, yeah?”

“Did he ever remarry?”

Joni figures that’s fair, her prying like this. She opened the door, Lydia’s just walking through it. “No. It was always just the two of us.”

Lydia stretches out, arms above her head, rolling her neck. She’s so elegant, so graceful. Like a beautiful, Persian cat. When she settles the whole house seems to settle with her, like it answers to her moods. “And how was he at that? Being a father?”

Joni startles. “What do you mean?”

Lydia reaches across the thick cherry wood coffee table for her mug. Her long, delicate fingers heavy with rings. “I can’t imagine that was easy, taking on those roles. For either of you.”

Joni rubs her fingers nervously along her collarbone. Not even she and Leah usually get this in-depth about it, but there’s something about the warmth in the house, the way her stomach is so pleasantly full. “We don’t talk much anymore. My dad and I.”

“That’s too bad.”

Joni almost scoffs. Hardly. “He did his best…it wasn’t really enough.” She can’t stop now that she’s started. She’s never said this before. To _anyone. _Not even those first, vulnerable, days in the hospital, so raw that the staff wouldn’t even let her shave her legs unsupervised. She’s not even sure if she’s ever even _thought _the thing she’s saying now. “We stopped seeing my grandfather, my mother’s dad,” she adds with a nod, “pretty soon after she died.” Joni sighs. When she closes her eyes she can almost smell the wood smoke of her grandfather’s fires, can almost see him bent over his pack, cleaning fish, his nimble fingers making quick work with a knife. “He was the only stable man I knew. The only one who took the time to care about me. To listen.” Joni laughs, wiping a few stray tears from her eyes. “I’m sorry. This usually doesn’t make me so emotional.”

“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to know.”

Joni nods, still wiping tears, and takes a long look around the room. It’s so warm. So full. Photographs and knickknacks. Exotic looking souvenirs. The mark of a full life. Joni looks again at the photographs on the mantle. No family, as far as she can tell, only friends. A full life entirely of her own making, then. Isn’t that something. “I think my grandfather was my only chance for a normal life.” She glances over at Lydia, laughing a little bitterly.. “I think my dad robbed me of that.” Joni misses her grandfather brutally in that moment, a long-deferred grief settling easily in her chest.

“And why don’t you think you have a normal life? It seems normal to me.”

“I let men destroy me.” Joni whispers it. It feels like a curse to say out loud. “Past, present,” Joni shrugs, “probably future?”

Lydia quirks a well-manicured eyebrow. “Oh?”

“I have a lot of boy trouble.” Joni slumps her shoulders, feeling suddenly very, very young. “All my trouble is boy trouble.”

“And so it goes.” Joni holds her mug with both hands, looking down at the way the coffee swirls inside. “So who is that boy then?”

She glances up. “What boy?”

Lydia smiles. “I’m sure you know the one.”

“Oh…oh!” Joni rubs at her collarbone again. “Has he…come back around the store?”

“Once or twice. But he purchased books both times.” She cocks her head, eyes going a little dreamy. “What is his name?”

“Sebastian.”

Lydia smiles knowingly. “Sebastian. A strong name, don’t you think?”

Joni just shrugs. “We were together.”

Lydia has a twinkling laugh. “Oh, darling, I already knew that.”

Joni frowns. “Did he say something to you?”

“No, dear, and he didn’t need to. Just like you don’t need to tell me that you want to be back with him.”

Joni jolts, eyes searching. “How on earth-“

Lydia sets her mug down with a sigh, looking slowly along the photographs on the mantel. The fire pops and sizzles. “That dance, the one the two of you have been doing for months, it’s only for those who are deeply, tragically in love.”

“He broke my heart.” She sounds resigned as she says it.

“Of course he did. But was the blade meant for you? Or for himself?”

Joni recoils. “What does that even mean?”

“Men are complicated because they aren’t. If you love him then you do and sometimes it’s that easy.”

It’s late. The oven clock blinks 3am. Her apartment is quiet, everyone else asleep. Joni’s heartbeat is the loudest thing in the room. Louder even than the phone. He answers on the last ring, voice heavy with sleep. She gasps, like she can’t believe he’s real. Like she can’t believe that after all this time he still exists, still answers her calls.

“Joni?” She can almost see him, wiping the sleep from his eyes, realization dawning slowly on him. “Joni!” She hears him wake all the way up. “Oh shit, Joni. Where are you? Has something happened?”

“No.” She hears him exhale. “No, I’m…I’m home.”

“Oh.” He clicks his tongue against his teeth. “Okay. It’s, um, it’s-“

“Late.”

“Yeah.”

“I love you.”

She hears him suck in a harsh breath. “I love you too. I…why are you-“

“I wanted to say it again.” Her heart is pounding in her fingertips, phone pressed almost painfully to her cheek. “I want you to know that I love you more than I have ever loved anyone. Ever. And I don’t want to live a life without you in it. I want to be with you forever.” She catches her breath. “I want to be with you.”

“Joni.” He’s breathless when he says her name. Like it’s a sacred thing. Like it’s precious. “Are you asking me…what are you asking me?”

“I don’t know,” she tells him quietly.

“Because if you are asking me what I think you are then I’ll be over in a second. Give me ten minutes. I can call a cab. Give me-“

“Stay where you are!” It comes out harsh. Her skin is all nerves.

“What do you want from me?” It sounds like anguish. 

“I want you.” Joni wipes her tears from her cheeks. “I want you and I…I’m afraid.”

“Of me.”

“Yes.” Her voice is so small.

His is timid too. “Why?”

“Because,” Joni sniffles, “because if I let you back in...if I…” she starts to cry harder and when Sebastian hears it he makes a soft, strangled sound. “You can’t take any more of me, Sebastian Kouris. Not another piece.” Joni wipes angrily at her cheeks. “You have to keep them safe. The pieces of me that you have already, that you’ll always have.”

“Yes, _yes, _always.”

“This weekend.” She doesn’t know what she’s doing, but does it anyway. 

“This weekend,” he parrots, sounding out of breath.

“Let’s…we can see each other. And we can be…”

“Together?”

“Yeah.”

“Yes,” he sounds so young, “yes, okay.” And it feels like freedom. And it feels like falling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading <3


	15. One*

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, it happened ;)

Joni can’t remember the last time she went to a bar by herself. Much less a bar like this. Low light, chrome fixtures. A thumping, thrumming soundtrack that makes her heartbeat feel erratic. Yoba, it’s probably been years since she’s been somewhere like this. That’s probably why she picked it, honestly. She doesn’t want to feel like herself tonight. Or maybe she wants to feel like a braver version of herself, a more daring version. It’s who she has to become if she’s gonna let him back in. Though, that possibility seems to be steadily fading.

She checks her watch again. He’s almost an hour late. Joni brushes her hair from her face and marvels at the fact that she feels absolutely nothing. Not angry, not tense. Not even a lick of anxiety. Joni takes another sip of her drink. She’s had two so far. They’re colorful, sort of tangy. The cocktail menu at the bar reads like flowery college class poetry, liquor she’s never heard of, flavor notes she’s not even sure exist. But they are _strong. _Yoba, they better be for how expensive they are. She can’t afford one of them, really, much less the three she’s ordered so far. Her next paycheck is a week off and Shane’s rent payment practically disappears the moment it hits her bank account. She’s pushing it, but it’s hard to give a shit about that when it’s pretty clear that Sebastian is standing her up. Funny. Really funny. Of course this would happen when she’d been so sure she held all the cards. Of course, it would go like this, she was practically asking it to. She’d been so confident. Lydia made her feel that way. Made her think that love was some kind of powerful, physical force. That it could pull the fabric of her universe back together. Easy. So easy.

It all sounds like Emily’s esoteric bullshit now that she’s running over it in her head again. The bar doesn’t help. It’s got the stale feeling of young money that makes all of that lovey dovey mystical bullshit seem even more stark. Joni brushes her hair back, fussing with the bobby pins she’d spent so long making just right. It’s embarrassing now, to have tried so hard. She slumps, wishing she’d brought a jacket. Her dress too thin for the weather, for the time of night.

She finishes her third drink, thankful that the liquor has numbed her out so much that she can’t scrounge up any tears, and waves down the bartender. He takes his sweet time making his way down to her. He’s been like that all night. Slow. Inattentive. He probably knows with just one look that she doesn’t really belong at this bar, that her tip is going to be shit. “Tab’s paid.” He says quickly, skimming past her toward a group of suited men further down the bar.

Joni pauses, purse balanced on her lap. She’d been searching for her wallet. “What?” She raises her voice, waving him down again. “What did you say?”

The bartender stops back in front of her to squeeze a couple limes into a shaker. He barely glances up at her. “Tab’s paid.”

“What? By who?” He nods to his left and a cold dread settles in her chest. Maybe if she doesn’t look, she’ll never know. Maybe all the terrifying men she’s imagining it could be will just cease to exist. What a nightmare this has been, what a real shit show of a night.

“You come here often?” Joni lets out a shuddering breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Sebastian smells the same as he always did. Bar soap and cigarettes and she is so relieved that all the tears she hadn’t cried while she waited threaten at the corners of her eyes. And then anger rolls clean over her.

She looks up at him and her eyes are burning and he at least has the decency to look sheepish. He seems so much taller in this low light than she remembers him. Like she’s seeing him for the very first time. So handsome, almost intimidating, but his eyes are soft and she finds herself leaning toward him. She pulls back quickly, frowning. “Fucking hell, Sebastian! Do you have any idea how long-“

He holds his hands up. “I’m so sorry. There was an accident on the tracks. H line was backed up like you wouldn’t believe.”

The relief that rushes up inside of her is so sharp it almost hurts. “Fuck.”

“I’m sorry.”

Joni tucks a few stray hairs behind her hears. “It’s fine…it’s…” He runs his fingers lightly over her shoulders, his thumbs tracing her collarbone. She hesitates. Sebastian’s clearly just gotten off work, wearing those tailored pants and that button-down that she barely recognizes on him. The light here heightens the olive undertones of his skin, the almost blue blackness of his hair. She lowers her eyes. “I thought you’d decided not to come.”

He frowns. “What? Like I was standing you up?” She nods, pulling away from him. “Why on earth would I do that?” Joni shrugs, still looking away. She’s started to shiver, just lightly. His fingers find her jaw, gently raising her face to his. “Never again, Joni. Okay? Never again.”

Her heart is beating so loudly that it drowns out the music around them. It’s so terrifying, this precipice. There’s a voice, louder now than it’s been in a long time, that reminds her how safe it is to be alone. But how lonely. How lonely. She reaches for his hands. “Let’s get out of here.”

“We just got here.” She reaches up to kiss him and he bends toward her like she’s the center of his gravity.

His counter is cold on her bare thighs as Sebastian pulls her tights down her legs. She leans back against the cabinets, letting her eyes close. A pot of coffee is bubbling in the machine, the thick, rich smell filling the kitchen. Sebastian’s breath is hot on her thigh, but it leaves her quickly, moving upward until it reaches the shell of her ear. His fingers race up her arms, searching for the straps on her dress, but Joni stops him, holds his fingers tightly in her own. Sebastian looks at her, searching her face. “I want to start over.”

He pulls away. “What do you mean?”

Joni looks at him seriously. “You just met me. This is the first time we’ve ever met.”

His eyebrows knit together, bottom lip twitching in confusion. “O…okay.” He stands up a little straighter, thumbs stroking her cheeks. “Can I kiss you?” Joni nods, taking a deep breath. She doesn’t know what she needs, doesn’t know really what’s happening, but his touch is her guide and she leans into it. His kisses her just lightly at first, pecks. Softness, sweetness. It’s a half-formed fantasy. One she can’t commit to, one she just wants to toy with. She cups his face in her hands and pulls him into a deeper kiss. He falls into it, hands under her knees, slipping easily between her legs.

His fingers inch up her thighs, pushing her skirt up toward her hips, and she stops him again, their lips hovering close to each other. “You can touch me, but you can’t put anything inside me.” He furrows his brows again, but nods. “I don’t fuck on first dates.”

He smiles lightly, then tucks it away, all serious. Sebastian leans down to kiss her again, fingers finding the straps of her dress, sliding them down her arms until her dress falls down around her bent hips. Time is slow here. Sebastian’s apartment muffles the sounds from outside, rendering the city speechless. There’s only the ticking of his hall clock, the gurgling from the coffee machine, their panting breaths. Sebastian runs his thumbs along the top of her ribs. “You have really good tits.” He glances up to meet her eyes. “Has anyone ever told you that?”

Joni wavers. Every nerve in her body is just on fire. “No. No one. Never.” She swallows hard. “Maybe I’ve never been touched in my whole life.” Joni surprises herself.

Surprises Sebastian too. He blinks at her, fingers frozen on her thighs. But then his thumbs start those soothing circles again on her skin again. “Oh?” She nods, feeling a rush. “I’ll be gentle then.” Joni exhales, letting her head rock back, letting Sebastian take the lead.

He nudges her knees apart, lowering himself onto the floor. He lifts her hips, rolling her panties down her legs. She hears them land softly on the tile. Cold air hits between her legs and she shivers. He warms her with his fingers, dragging them down the lips of her pussy. “You’re beautiful,” he whispers into the skin of her thigh, “I hope someone’s told you that before.”

He tells her with his body. Makes sure she knows. He tells her that with their bodies pressed tightly together, her back pressed into his mattress, hair splayed out on his pillows. Their fingers entwined, thrusts deep and slow. Like they have so much time. Like time is all they have.

Joni untangles her fingers from his and wraps her arms around his middle, breathing him in. Her heart is pounding but she feels suspended in his warmth, kept safe from her own racing thoughts.

They fuck for a long time, chasing nothing but each other’s touch. Joni cums first, her body going rigid, letting out a broken cry of his name as she comes down, thighs trembling against him. Sebastian cums soon after, grunting in her ear, hips stuttering against her. They don’t move. He softens inside of her. She brushes her knuckles against the back of her neck.

Sebastian smooths her hair from her forehead, kissing one cheekbone. They’ve been at this for Yoba knows how long. Just touching each other, rolling around in each other’s arms. His duvet is tangled around them, the pillows strewn along the bed. “Do you need anything?” He asks softly.

She turns to look at him. It’s the darkest part of the night but the city casts a faint glow into the room, the lights from the buildings looming in the distance spilling over the bed. “What do you mean?”

Sebastian stutters, suddenly nervous. “Just, um, I don’t know water or like…I don’t know.”

Joni sits up, resting on her bent arm. “What’s going on?”

“What do you mean?”

“You seem…tense.” All the anxiety that had bled out of her rushes back. “You seem…”

He purses his lips. “I have to ask you something, okay. I have to.” Joni gulps. “I just need to know. I can’t…I need to know.” Joni sits up even more, heart pounding now. “Am I like…” Sebastian turns to sit all the way up, back against the headboard. He rests his hands in his lap, worrying the skin around his nails. “Is this…” He takes a deep breath, looking briefly at the ceiling before glancing back at Joni. “Are we together?” He frowns, eyes pleading. “Like _together _together.”

Joni runs her fingers through his dark curls, taking in every inch of his face. “Yeah. Yeah, we are.”

Sebastian’s face breaks and the obvious relief that washes over him is enough. She knows that immediately. It will be enough. A sturdy foundation. He must feel that too. He pulls her over so she’s straddling him, her palms on his bare chest, his cock lying soft beside her thigh. He drags the backs of his fingers down her sternum, her belly. “What changed?” Glances up to meet her eyes. “What changed for you?”

Joni runs her fingers across the firm muscles of his shoulder, tracing his tattoos. So many of them. Rough stick and pokes, the feathery lines of his bigger pieces. A mosaic on his skin. She lays a thumb on his bottom lip, he kisses it. “I guess I just don’t want to be to be afraid anymore.” She cocks her head at him. “You know?”

He smiles, hands sliding around to cup her hips. “Yeah, I know.” Their lips are hot when they meet. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! Your comments and kudos give me life!


	16. Small Press

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A package at work makes Joni worry that the Valley hasn't let her go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uh oh 2.0

Lydia’s inventory system is as old school as it gets. A thick, three-ring binder stuffed so full of papers that it’s inverted on itself. Heavy and dusty and highly intricate. Joni has it open in her lap, perched on the counter beside the register with her legs crossed. It’s tedious to put new books in but lately the tedium has been more manageable. Almost soothing. Joni imagines that might be one of the benefits of getting fucked regularly again, of waking up beside someone every morning. Better focus. Her thoughts are a little less ragged these days. Soothed some even if she finds herself drifting off during work. It’s easy to get dreamy about the last few weeks, really, about the way she and Sebastian have slotted together again like two puzzle pieces, like that year apart had been nothing much at all. 

Joni shifts up to her knees and makes quick work of the tape on the next box with Lydia’s equally ancient utility knife. It’s a different book than the box before and Joni groans, reaching back for the inventory binder. She takes a few of the books out and sets them in her lap. They’re thin paperbacks with cherry red covers. The title font is shimmery gold. An interesting choice. She read the title. _The Winter Fox _by Elliot Turner. Joni pauses. She can feel her heartbeat pick up, stuttering under her ribs. She reads it again. Joni swallows hard and turns the book over in her hand to read the back. _A beautiful girl. A brilliant man. A romance bordering on obsession. _Bland. Canned. Uninteresting. Joni’s heart is pounding now, just racing. But there’s no way. Right? What absolutely cruelty that would be for the universe to lay that in her lap. And besides, what are the odds? Joni opens the book. It’s dedicated “to the lady of the ocean”. Joni’s stomach twists. She glances up at the shop. It’s mostly empty. Not all that unusual for the late afternoon when the lunch break browsers have cleared out and the after-work crowd is still stuck in their offices. The big oak on the sidewalk out front as lividly red as the book she’s got in her hands, a stark contrast to the grey day. She turns back to the book, flipping a few pages until she finds the beginning. She takes a deep breath and starts to read.

_I saw her first on the beach. She was a thunderstorm, strong as a tidal wave, but so vulnerable. And I knew, as I watched her from my window, that if I let her, she would blow me away. _Joni quickly closes the book, a wave of nausea rolling over her. She flips the book over again and flips through the last few pages searching for something, _anything, _about the author. She finds nothing. Just his name.

Lydia comes out from the backroom, setting another box on the counter. “Quick question.” Joni says, sliding off the counter. Lydia nods that she’s heard her, crouching to dig through a drawer under the register. “What’s up with these?”

Lydia reemerges from under the desk, pad of paper in hand. “What do you mean _these_?” Joni nods toward the open box. “Ah. Local author. Small press.” Lydia waves almost dismissively. “Nothing special, but I’m trying to stay current.” Lydia peaks into the box. “And we don’t have much for romance in the store.”

“Is it new?”

“The book?” Joni nods. “I think it came out about a month ago. Maybe less. Author’s first. I heard about it from a friend. They said it was fine. A bit much in certain spots, but there’s an audience for that too.”

“Oh.” Joni flips the books over again, studying the cover. Pleading with it. _Just tell me what I need to know. _She beats it once, twice against her palm. “Do you, uh, mind if I take a copy home? I won’t like…” She flips through the pages again, words jumping out at her, spinning, “mark in it or anything. No dog ears.”

Lydia quirks an eyebrow. “I don’t see why not.” She picks up one of the books, reading the back. “I have to admit I never took you for a romance fan.”

Joni turns the books over in her hand. It’s a slim volume, but it feels suddenly very heavy. “I’m branching out.

The train takes a sharp turn and everyone inside sways in the opposite direction, a few people grasping quickly for the poles. Joni barely notices, lets the train rock her this way and that. She’s engrossed and distracted in equal parts. The book is, just objectively, boring as shit. And the writing is so dense she has to read each paragraph more than once to make sure she’s getting the gist. But she’s been soldiering on, desperate for some clue as to whether or not this is what she thinks she is. What she hopes it isn’t.

The first chapter had just been wordy exposition. Man becomes disillusioned with the city. Man has his heartbroken. Man moves to the country to find creative inspiration. It’s eerily similar to what Elliot told her that afternoon in the Saloon, but it’s also cliché. There’s probably a hundred books like this just in Lydia’s shop and probably thousands of men in this city who want to write books about exactly that.

Joni flips the page as the train lurches again along the track. An old woman sits on the seat beside her, hands folded primly in her lap. They glance at each other. Joni shifts away, starting in on the second chapter.

_The fat man behind the counter surveyed me with a suspicion I had become accustomed to in a town such as this. I stood out like a sore thumb. And so did she. _A teenage girl brushes past Joni as the train slows to a stop, her backpack nearly knocking the book out of her hands. They mutter apologies to each other. The automated message that plays at each stop is a little distorted. There’d been an announcement tacked just above the ticket machine about electrical issues on the train, a tentative schedule for repairs. Joni doesn’t care much about that either way, but it’s a little eerie, that garbled robot voice. She flips the book back open, bouncing nervously on her toes. The words shiver on the page. She takes her bottom lip between her teeth.

_The barkeep questioned me at length, his great belly straining against his garment and I shuddered in disgust. What a picture of excess. A town both bland and gluttonous. To write, in a town bowed in the face of agriculture, was anathema. Something I would have to claw my way into. Never did I expect, in this town of dust, hollow of creativity, to find a muse. But a muse there was. Amongst the ashes of civilized thought. And as she walked in I could feel the pull of the planet, like the pull of the tides toward her. _

It’s the Saloon. He’s writing about the Saloon, about Gus. This is Elliot. _Her _Elliot. Joni closes the book again and kneads at her temples. This is insane. _Insane. _Joni’s seeing what she wants to see. It’s anxiety. It’s lack of sleep. It’s _anything _other than this.

The train lurches again and this time she does drop the book. It lands open on the train’s dirty floor. She leans down to pick it up, wiping wet grime from the cover onto her jeans. So much for only borrowing it. Joni takes a deep breath. This damn book could be about anyone. Any small town. It’s a dull, overblown, purple-prosed book about a man’s ego and a masturbatory exercise in voyeurism and it has nothing to do with her. She tells herself that over and over. She tells herself that until she almost believes it.

“Seb left a message,” Leah calls from the far end of the living room. She’s in nothing but a sports bra and pair of shorts, sitting cross-legged in front of a canvas. She looks a little worn out and Joni figures she just got finished stretching it and is momentarily thankful she wasn’t home to be goaded into helping.

Joni drops her bag with a dull thud by the front door. She can’t shake the feeling of dread that’s settled into her chest, but she’s trying her best to. She rolls her neck, working out of the kinks. “Cool. Thanks for letting me know.” Joni pads up behind Leah, cocking her head as she looks at the canvas. Right now, it’s only a bright splash of peach paint, laid thick down the center. “I like it.”

“It’s not anything yet.” Leah says, leaning back and frowning. She cranes her neck, looking at Joni upside down. “But thank you.”

Joni starts in on her thumbnail, toeing her sneakers off. “Hey, um, weird question, but, uh, what was Elliot’s last name?”

Leah quirks an eyebrow then scoots around to face her. “Why?”

Joni shrugs. “Just curious.”

“Uh huh.”

“Just one of those train thoughts, you know.”

“…yeah.” Leah looks unconvinced, but shrugs, turning back to her canvas. “I have no idea what his last name is. He probably never even told me.”

Joni scratches at her collarbone. “Yeah, I guess that’s not surprising. Maybe I could call Emily or something. She might know.”

“That’s a lot of work for a train thought.”

“It’s stuck in my craw now.” Joni heads toward the blinking phone and presses the play button. “Just curious.”

“Hey Joni.” Sebastian sounds tired or maybe distracted. “Um. I’m working a little late tonight. Don’t want to keep you up if you have an early morning, but I know we agreed to meet at your place tonight.” She heads into the kitchen, flipping the coffee machine on. The sound of the grind mutes his voice, but she gets the gist. He’s still gonna head over. She should call the office if she’d rather sleep. The grind stops. “I’m gonna pick up some food,” he says, “maybe some beer too.”

She pads back into the living room and deletes the message with a beep. “Gonna try and get some shut-eye. Sebastian’s gonna ring the buzzer in a few hours. Let him up?”

“Sure thing.” Leah rolls her neck, loosening her shoulders. Joni can tell she’s settling in for the long haul. “Sleep tight.” 

_Gold silk for hair. Eyes the color of tidepools. A muse before I even had a word, a thought for such a thing. Legs long and limber like a fawn’s. A knock-kneed girl. _Well, that’s unflattering, Joni thinks before harshly reminding herself that this isn’t about her. This is _not _a book about Pelican Town and this is _not _a book about her. _Her_ Elliot didn’t write this book. For all she knows, Elliot is in some cabin as drab as the one he had in Pelican town, beating away at some typewriter. For all she knows, he never finished his damn novel. The description goes on for almost another full paragraph, but Joni’s had enough. She sets the book on her desk, brushing aside seed catalogs and books on flower cultivation, then heads for her mattress, flopping dramatically onto her back. When she closes her eyes, Elliot’s long fingers come into view. She watches them take her phone off the hook. She doesn’t close her eyes again.

She stares at her ceiling, the city lights undulating through her windows. Her alarm clock blinks 10pm. Two more hours and Sebastian will be here. She can hide in his arms. Forget about this day entirely. Leah’s humming in the kitchen and she can hear Goose stalking down the hall, drawn by the clink of pans as Leah starts the stove. Joni’s calm. She’s safe. It’s nothing. It’s absolutely nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading guys <3.


	17. Slim Volumes*

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They may be back together, but some things don’t change without work

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise the comfort is coming for these two (eventually)

They haven’t set up a voice message yet and there’s something about it that makes him smile. It’s fitting. The two of them forever in each other’s orbit, forever humming with creative energy. He’d felt it the moment he stepped inside that apartment for the first time. The sheer weight of their brilliance. Both of them. The apartment was like an extension of it. Dense with plants and canvas. Dog-eared books and printed out recipes. Papers and half-empty cups of coffee, old tea bags drying beside the sink. Seed packets tied together with hair bands and fancy art prints tacked up beside show posters on the wall. He’d felt home immediately, even as Leah regarded him with a healthy dose of suspicion from the living room couch. He would weather that and whole lot more if it granted him access to this paradise.

Sebastian calls again, this time leaving a message after the automated tone. The message meanders a little, fatigue weighing heavily on him, but he figures Joni’ll get the gist. He tries to imagine what he might be doing to take her away from the phone this late. Probably on the roof, he thinks, tending to her flowers. Yoba, those flowers. The first time she’d taken him up, dressed in only his shirt and her underwear, the smell of their fucking still clinging to her skin, he’d been stunned. “You’re magic,” he’d told her, breathless. She’d laughed dismissively at him, rolling a joint between her nimble fingers. But he’d meant it absolutely. Only someone magical could do what she’d done on this desolate patch of concrete. He’s so lost in thought, so light, that he doesn’t hear his office door open. And when he hears it click closed, he grins, assuming it’s Aaron come to chastise him for working this late, to crack a few beers open over his desk.

But Aaron would never lay his hands on Sebastian like this and before she even opens her mouth, he knows it’s her. “Thank you _so _much for staying late, Sebastian.” Marianne squeezes both of his shoulders and Sebastian tenses.

He puts the phone roughly back in the receiver. “Of course. It’s no problem.”

She bends down until their cheeks nearly touch. He can smell the chemical tang of her perfume, feel the heat coming off her skin. He swallows hard, staring at the screen in front of him. The chameleon colors of his screensaver reflecting on his face. “You deserve a reward.” He exhales, pulling just slightly away from her. Testing his position. She doubles down, squeezing, then releasing. She leans onto his desk, stretching out like a jungle cat. Her gaze is unbreakable. “Why don’t you come to my place. I can order from that delightful little French place a few blocks down. Michelin stars. Two, I think. We can split a bottle of wine. We can,” her fingers find him again, “see where the night goes.”

Sebastian shakes her off, pulling his jacket off the back of his chair and throwing it on. “Sorry,” he says, searching for his messenger bag, “I, uh, I have plans already.” Marianne’s face darkens and Sebastian knows the danger in that look. “What about next week?”

She slowly cocks her head. “Next week then. Let’s do Wednesday. Let’s do seven-o-clock.”

Sebastian gulps, his hands clammy, his heart pounding, but he sees no other way out. He needs to take the exit she’s offering him and he’ll figure out what the fuck he’s going to do when Wednesday rolls around later. “Great.”

She smiles, reaching out to muss his hair. He grits his teeth to stop from recoiling. “And how are you? I mean _really?” _

Sebastian frowns. “Fine.” Then he remembers and schools his face into appropriate grief. “It’s been, um, it’s been difficult.”

She pats him on the cheek. “Of course it has.”

The bag crinkles as he walks, air heavy with humid chill. Joni’s neighborhood is rowdier than his, full of life even this late at night. Music blares from open windows, from stereos on stoops. A homeless man breaks into loud muttering on the street corner as Sebastian passes.

Sebastian scrapes his hair back with his free hand. He’s exhausted. And starving. The bag heavy in his hand. A couple splotches of grease bleed through the paper and onto the plastic sack.

It’s not Michelin starred, but Bianchi’s is good as shit. Cheap to boot. He’d picked up a few entrees, figures Joi can eat the leftovers for the rest of the week. Figures that might give her some incentive to eat a little more regularly. He knows it’s a guerilla approach, knows she’ll probably roll her eyes at him, but hell, it can’t hurt to try. Worst case, Leah’ll be the one to eat them. It’s a good distraction anyway, trying to figure Joni’s shit out. It makes it easy for him to let go of his own shit for a while. Mostly. He can still feel Marianne’s hands like claws on his shoulders. Here, on the other side of town from his office, he feels like he can breathe for the first time all day.

Goose is thrilled to see him, pawing at his pant leg with the kind of enthusiasm the cat seems to reserve only for him, but Leah’s got that singular focus in her eyes that keeps her tone clipped and her responses minimal. Her smock is paint-stained and she reeks of oils and resins. “Joni’s asleep,” she tells him, shutting the door behind him. She heads back to an easel pushed up against the far living room wall. “Told me to tell you to wake her when you got here.”

Sebastian cocks an eyebrow. “She alright?”

Leah turns to look at him. “Why wouldn’t she be?”

He knows he’s not going to get anything else out of here, not when she’s in her creative groove like this. And besides, despite their mostly friendly conversations over the last couple of weeks, he knows he’s still on thin ice with her. 

Joni’s so deeply asleep when he creeps into her bedroom that he almost doesn’t want to wake her. She looks tranquil, her hair spilling across her pillowcase. But he knows she probably hasn’t eaten dinner so he tries, gently as he can, to shake her awake. She preens against his hand, reaching over to pull him closer. Eyes fluttering open. He brushes a few stray hairs from her face and smiles down at her. “Hey.”

“Hey,” she says, voice heavy with sleep.

“Took a nap, huh?”

She wipes slowly at her eyes. “Yoba, I guess. Long day at work.” Then suddenly, she sits bolt upright, eyes darting around the room.

Sebastian takes his hands off her, frowning. “Are you okay?”

She exhales, one hand clutched to her chest. She laughs a little nervously, smiling weakly at him. “Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry, I just…I had a weird dream. Just…remembered it all at once.” She smooths her hair back. “I really shouldn’t nap this late.”

There’s something else. He isn’t sure how he knows, but he does. Something has happened and he knows too that he won’t be getting it out of her, not if he just asks. He pulls her gently to her feet, pressing a kiss at her hairline. “Well, you know you can always tell me about your nightmares.”

Joni tucks into her chicken parmesan. She has her legs crossed, the takeout container in her lap, her face nearly obscured in the shadow of a particularly treelike sunflower. It’s a chilly night, almost too chilly for them to be out here, and Sebastian wonders what she’s going to do with all these flowers before the first frost. He’ll offer up his place, he decides. Yoba knows he has enough space. He wonders if she’ll let him, still feeling out the contours of their relationship. It’s new. They’ve been apart more than a year and he’s still learning who Joni is now.

The night sky around them is only half dark, the glow of the city banishing its usual late fall blackness. Below sirens whizz past. Someone on a stoop below is having a party, someone on the street is having a fight, but way up here it’s all muted. Just the ambient hum of the building’s big, metal heating unit. “I’ve been dreaming about him a lot.”

Sebastian doesn’t need to ask who. He pauses, forkful of spaghetti hanging just below his mouth. He sets it back down. “Oh yeah?”

She nods, setting her plate down beside her and looking out at the city beyond. The bridge over the South Canal twinkles, its light reflecting onto the watery void of the harbor. “Yeah…just…that night. I’ve been dreaming about that night.”

“Why do you think you’ve started dreaming about him now?”

She turns to him, eyes wide, like he’s uncovered something he wasn’t supposed to. She recovers quickly. A chill ticks up his spine. “I have no idea.”

He swallows. “You haven’t like seen him around, have you?”

She looks up at him, startled. “No! Why?”

He shakes his head. “No reason, I just…” he pauses, thinking, “just has something happened? Like did the police…I don’t know.” She hesitates for only a second, but her ‘no’ is so firm that he knows he’s not going to get anything else out of her tonight. He makes a mental note to keep his eyes open and maybe, if she softens up, to ask Leah if she knows anything. He can tell Joni is desperate for a change of subject and maybe he…maybe he needs to get something off his chest too. “My dreams have been weird too.” It’s a strange lie. But it’s a way to ease in, maybe the only way he knows how. Sebastian opens up the littlest Styrofoam box and hands her one of the pair of cannoli inside.

Joni splits hers in half. It makes him smile even as the harshness of the day is settling fully onto his shoulders. She’s always a little destructive, a little bit feral about food. Especially sweets. “What have they been about?” She swipes a stray bit of filling from her lip and smiles at the taste. It’s good to see her eat, good to see her smile. Good to be the reason she’s doing both.

“Work.” 

Joni pauses and looks up at him. He doesn’t talk about his job. He _never _talks about his job. And that’s on purpose. Both of them know that. They haven’t discussed it, but he imagines Joni thinks his silence is to spare her memories of that horrible breakup. But it’s not that. Not really. He’s worried that if he starts in on it with her, he won’t be able to stop. That everything will come out, like the deluge after a dam breaks. He’ll tell her everything. Marianne’s advances. The dread inside of him each time he opens the door to his office. Those long, ominous rides up in the elevator. She doesn’t need to know, doesn’t need to carry that. She has more than enough on her plate. “Anything in particular?”

He shrugs. “No, just…” He trails off. “I don’t know. Standard dream stuff, I guess.” He takes a long swig of beer. “Walking in late for meetings. Getting fired.”

Joni sips her beer too. “Right.”

Neither of them are going to say another word about this, he can tell. At least not tonight. Maybe those wounds are still too raw, maybe this is the last chasm they have to jump to come back to each other fully. But it’s late and they’re tired and maybe if they jump now, they’ll miss. Sebastian takes pity on them both and just shrugs. “Eh, I don’t want to talk about nightmares anymore.”

“Me either.” She sets her beer down onto the concrete and crawls over to where he’s sitting. The kiss she pulls him into is rough, needy. She tastes like chocolate chips, like custard.

Sebastian bends her over the sink so she can watch herself. So she can watch him. She’s tense. He’s felt that energy all night long, but now that he’s got her naked, he can see the way her shoulders are bunched close to her neck. Her fingernails are stained with blood from where she’s worried the skin around them with her teeth.

They’re slick from the shower, dripping, and the air is still thick with steam. Joni’s fingers splay on the mirror, her breath shuddering as he fingers her. “I want to take care of you.” He whispers, to himself, to the room. To her.

She looks dreamily at him in the mirror. “You always say that.”

“I always mean it.” He slips a third finger inside of her and she moans, laying her head beside the faucet, eyes fluttering closed.

“You always take such good care of me.” Sebastian halts his movements. She’d said it like she didn’t mean for him to hear it, like from a half-sleep.

Does she really think that? Does she really? His heart hurts, hot and swollen in his chest, and he wants to consume her. To hold her in his arms until the stars flicker out, until the world ends. “_Baby” _He croons. She bucks back against him, whimpering, begging him to move. He kisses her tailbone, then quirks his fingers down.

Joni yelps, rolling her hips back, churning against his palm. “You’re gonna make a mess in my bathroom.” She manages, breathless.

“Yeah.” He nips at the swell of her hip, rolling his tongue down over the tight bud of her ass. “Yeah, I am.”

She cums all over his fingers. Cums so hard her knuckles are white, arms and legs twitching against the counter. Her cum sloshes onto the tile floor, against his bare thighs and he can’t stifle a throaty growl.

Joni’s breathing hard, her hands flexing against the mirror. He pulls her up gently until her back is flush to his chest. The steam on the mirror has faded enough that Sebastian can see their reflections. See the flush on Joni’s cheeks, her pupils blown wide. He kisses beside her ear and trails his hand down her taut belly. She shudders against him, then snakes her hand around, fumbling for him. “I want…” She closes her eyes, grasping his cock almost painfully when she finds it, “I want you to fuck me _hard. _Harder than you’ve ever fucked me.” Sebastian digs his fingers into her hips. He wants to lose himself in her body too. _Hard. _He wants to erase all other touch, like she’s the only one who’s ever been close enough to lay her hands on him. And, in a way, she has. She’s seen the rawest bits of him. The undergrowth. Sebastian bends her back over the sink and when he slides into her, her shoulders finally, _finally _unclench. He’s light as a feather.

He waits until he knows Joni is asleep before creeping from her room, the glow of the city filtering through her windows guiding his way into the hall. Pale light spills into the hall from the kitchen and Sebastian isn’t surprised to find Leah leaning up against the counter, slurping up package ramen from a mug. “Just, um, wanted to get a glass of water.” Sebastian says, slipping his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants.

Leah nods toward the sink. “So,” she starts when he shuts the faucet off. “you’re back in the fold, huh?”

Sebastian laughs, taking a few sips of water. “Yoba, I hope so.”

Leah’s mug clatters empty in the sink. “Yeah, you’ve certainly been over here enough.”

Sebastian tries to read Leah’s face, her tone. He wagers they’ve known each other long enough that he can ask, tries to play it off as a joke. “How much do you hate me?’

Leah laughs. “I was the one who told her to give you a chance.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

She smirks. “I might hate you a little.”

He chuckles. “I probably deserve that.”

“And there he goes,” Leah says, opening the fridge, “making it so much harder to.” Sebastian smiles softly to himself. Leah pops her head out of the door. “These leftovers for me?”

Sebastian finishes his glass of water and sets it in the bottom of the sink. “They can be.”

“Nice. Thank you.”

Sebastian takes a deep breath, working a kink out of his neck with his fingers. “Listen, it’s not really my place, but…”

Leah scoffs. “Oh, this should be good.”

Sebastian shakes off the barb. “Is Joni okay?”

Leah frowns. “Why?”

“I just…I don’t know.”

She shuts the fridge door hard and looks him head-on. Sebastian flinches from the intensity of her gaze. “If you know something that I should know then you goddamn better tell me,”

He raises his palms in his defense. “I don’t, I don’t. I swear.” He runs his fingers through his hair. “I just…I have the jitters is all, I think. Still feels unreal that she let me come back.”

Leah looks at him for a long time before nodding once and heading down the hall. “Sleep well, Sebastian.” She flicks the light off, leaving alone in the dark. It’s not as comforting as it used to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading <3. You guys really are the best and I am so grateful that you've taken the time to read my work.


	18. Icicles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joni learns that some of her memories are darker than she knows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Should probably change the comfort tag to eventual comfort 
> 
> Bit of spoiler: seriously guys, don’t worry, I’m not gonna leave Joni in the lurch. This will end happily.

Sebastian’s been gone for two hours, but Joni can still smell him on her sheets. She can still feel his fingers between her legs. He’d been almost obsessive the night before, so focused on pleasuring her that she’d had to wrench herself away, ragged and overstimulated. He’d kissed her so gently after that, never taking his hands off her, never pulling away until she drifted off into a dreamless sleep. In the light of the morning, it seems a little manic. Like he was trying to extract something from inside of himself, trying to tear a feeling to pieces. But Joni guesses she’d been trying to do the same and to have his wide hands running down her body, his hot mouth whispering sweet filth to her, it had almost made her forget about the book. _Almost. _

Joni crawls to the end of her bed and is vaguely surprised to find the narrow book still on her desk where she’d left it. Like she’d expected it to have an almost spectral presence, to be clutched in her hand when she woke up. Suddenly she doesn’t want to be naked anymore and pulls the shirt Sebastian left beside her mattress over her head.

The book feels lighter in her hand than it did yesterday and Joni wonders if maybe she’d overreacted. If maybe she’ll open the book again and find nothing familiar inside. That another Elliot, an Elliot she’d never met, managed to get a trite, overblown little novel published through the sheer force of his will and his mediocrity has absolutely nothing to do with her. She flips it open, then settles back onto her bed, intent to cleanse herself of this once and for all.

She feels unsteady as she heads down the hall toward the bathroom. That vague vertigo when you’ve been laying on your back for the two long, all the blood rushing to your head when you stand. The hardwood is cold under her bare feet, the hall radiator clanking loudly. The building’s super turned the heat on just last week and Joni misses the control she had in the farmhouse, where she could just crank the heat up whenever she felt like it.

She’s so tense that she can’t pee right away, has to breathe slowly, has to imagine rushing water, pouring faucets. Her thoughts drift off and then she has to start all over again. Rushing water. Faucets. Joni wishes her body would hurry the fuck up. She doesn’t like the cool air on her bare pussy. Doesn’t like how exposed and strange it’s making her feel. Maybe it’s the book. Reading more of it certainly hasn’t assuaged any of her fears and it makes touching herself feel disturbing, even if it’s something as benign as wiping herself. When she finally manages to relax her body enough to pee, Joni lets her eyes close. Leah’s messing around in the kitchen, she can hear the clanging of pots and pans as she makes her breakfast, the sharp whistle of the kettle. Leah has a shift in a few hours, but she’s here now and Joni doesn’t know why it feels like Leah is in an entirely other world. There’s only a hallway between them but Joni feels so far away, so out of reach.

She settles back onto her bed, cross-legged on her rumpled sheets. The novel is waiting for her, so bright against the softness of the rest of her room. This damn book would be so boring if it wasn’t so sinister. A ham-handed dance between the protagonist and his nameless muse whose only notable qualities seemed to be her long legs and sad eyes. And for the most part, Joni had managed to convince herself that it probably isn’t about her. For one, there are basically no other characters. No Abigail, no Leah. No Sebastian. Just Gus, possibly Pierre. But two old men in a small town? It isn’t exactly innovative. And none of the scenes ring even remotely true. She’d just finished a chapter set during Spirit’s Eve that was almost laughable. His nameless muse had practically thrown herself at him, so easily wooed by his charm and his way with words. They’d kissed passionately beside the ocean, cold water rushing over their legs.

It’s an echo of a memory, sort of, but Joni tells herself she’s finding what she wants to find, assigning meaning where there is none. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes an overblown novel is just an overblown novel.

But as she flips to the next chapter, she swallows hard. She reads the first line then reads it again and a cold hand of dread snakes up her body. _In the waning cold of brutal winter, the festivities of Winter Star behind me, I made my way to her house in the dark. _The line is so chilling, so brutally cold, that she has to leave the apartment. Has to exorcise this energy from her house before it takes up residence. She dresses quickly, rushing out of the apartment without even saying goodbye to Leah, Goose yowling for her as she races down the hall.

It’s the first properly cold day of winter and steam is rising from manhole covers on the street. A hush has fallen over the city as people tuck themselves into their coats and hurry down the sidewalk. Even the harbor seems quieter, only a few ships sounding their horns on the water. Joni pulls her scarf tighter around her neck, trying to keep the chill at bay. She’d borrowed it from Leah. Heavy wool, thick knit. It smells like her and maybe that’s what she needs. She’d thought about telling her, but what would she say? How the hell would she explain any of this? And what if she’s right. Joni doesn’t want confirmation. She doesn’t want to commiserate. She wants to finish this stupid book then never think about it again. It feels sick to keep secrets, but Joni reminds herself that this isn’t a secret. Not really.

Joni’d taken the train down to the financial district, unsure of her destination, the novel tucked in her bag. The city feels more impressive down here. Shimmering skyscrapers and dark-tinted cars snaking along the streets. Briefcases bump her as she walks and the thick scent of expensive cologne hangs in the air every time she brushes against a suited man. They are all so singularly focused, all in so much of a hurry.

Maybe she’s unconsciously heading toward Sebastian’s office even though she only vaguely knows where it is, maybe she’s hoping she’ll run into him on her lunch break. She reminds herself that she can just _call _him if she wants to see him. But no. She’s not in a state to see anyone. Not yet. Once she finishes this book, she and he and Leah can all have a good laugh about it over some beer.

Steam comes pouring out of a doorway as a woman hurries onto the street. The rich smell of coffee wafts out after her. Joni pauses ducking out of the stream of pedestrians and presses her face against the glass. The barista is a woman and Joni feels a pinprick of fear that something like that has become so important to her. But it looks neutral, safe, so Joni heads inside.

All the clientele seem to be new moms of the Midtown variety. Bulky, lacy prams; cashmere scarves and Jimmy Choos. It’s bright, airy. Colorful. A little live, laugh, love and a lot like she won’t see anyone she knows. She drops her bag at a corner table and heads up to order a dead eye. She wants her body to feel as ragged and fucked up as her brain does. _Perfect symmetry, _Sarah used to say when she’d take an upper and a downer at the same time. Valium with a bump of coke.. Ecstasy with a toke of weed. Inauspicious that she’s thinking about Sarah after all this time, but Joni figures at least coffee isn’t going to put her in the hospital.

She settles into her seat, the book heavy again in her hands. _I could see the glow from her window from the front gate. An invitation. As warm as her skin would be when I touched it. But this was an intricate dance within which we were partners. She preening for me, me watching. Not yet ready to be touched. Readying herself coyly for me. Her, the consummate exhibitionist. Me, the ultimate flaneur. Strolling up the boulevard of her rural home. Soon to be strolling up the boulevard of her body. _

Joni finishes her coffee in a single, long pull and closes her eyes. This is terrible, terrible, but she can’t bring herself to stop. With each page she reads, she hopes she’ll find more evidence that this isn’t what she thinks it is, but each page only serves to increase her dread. Her bedroom window at the farmhouse faced the gate and that alone is enough to make a chill settle inside of her. But so do the bedroom windows of thousands of farmhouses, she tries to assure herself. This is not unique. This is cliché as it fucking comes. But when Joni opens the book again, her hands are trembling.

_Her bare back was to me, lit by her bedside lamp. I steadied myself on the window sill, minding the sheet of ice on the ground. A cold night. Spring just showing her coquettish self in the daytimes. My muse stretched, her golden locks flowing down her back. She turned, just the silhouette of her face visible to me then and though I could barely see her, I was sure she winked. _

_This game we played, I was intoxicated. I would play it until the end of my days, until the last rasping sounds of pleasure left my mouth. What sweet infatuation, what artistry. I stood to try and make my presence subtly known, to play her game, and my hand brushed against the glass-like surface of an icicle. It shattered, alarming my muse and I ducked my head down under the sill. What a careless moment. I chastised myself for ruining the tension between the two of us, for forfeiting this game. _

Joni slams the book closed with such force that a woman at the table next to her shoots her a look. She can’t breathe her chest is so tight. That night. She knows that night, remembers it so clearly. The night she’d been woken by the noise, the night she called Sebastian. The first time he’d ever touched her, ever _really _touched her. This can’t be. This cannot be. No, _no. _Joni stands, a little unsteady, and heads to the counter to order another coffee. Three shots of espresso just like the first. She wants to demolish herself. Wants to just tear herself to shreds.

She’s trembling all over when she sits back down, mouth so dry she barely tastes the coffee, doesn’t even need to add sugar to it. She starts again.

_The porch step creaked like an old ship and I could see my muse wandering down toward her kitchen. What did she have planned for me? I would never find out, because a great terror would flow through me. I could not extricate this feeling and headed off toward the back of her rural home. I needed air, needed to compose my thoughts, so great was my infatuation that my body would be ravaged by it. I was about to make my return, when a beast emerged from beside the shed. Dark and broad. A great, hulking animal. I backed away, terrified, but the beast did not see me. As I made my retreat, my long locks tangling in the brambles of a salmonberry bush. Leaving part of myself. Perchance for her to find, perchance as some token of my sacrifice for her. I left the farm inflamed, the great passion of lady creativity calling softly to me as if the waves of the ocean. _

It’s him. She can’t deny it anymore. Simply cannot. It’s him and he’s poured all this time and all this energy into an overblown fantasy. About _her. _When had he written this? Before or after that fateful night in her farmhouse? Did it even matter? Joni closes her eyes, hands falling limply at her sides. She wants to disappear. To blink out like an old star. She wants to be gone so that no one can ever lay their hands on her again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading. You guys really do make my day better with your comments and kudos (and just your views!). I love you all!
> 
> If you want to message me privately, tumblr is a good place to do it! I’m actually not really involved in fandom on Tumblr at all, so if you’re looking for fandom stuff then you won’t find it. It’s mostly film stills/photos I like: https://ebabel-na.tumblr.com/


	19. Blow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Turns out Sebastian isn’t the only one with a Marianne problem and the city is smaller than he thinks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Masculinity is hard. Early nineties masculinity is SO hard.

Sebastian does a double-take as Aaron rushes past him. His brain has been sluggish all morning, heavy with thoughts he hasn't let form and he’d slipped off to the break room almost forty minutes before to try and clear his head. So he’s sure that he imagined the look on Aaron’s face. If he didn’t know better, Sebastian might have thought Aaron was crying. But there’s no way. He’s known Aaron almost a year and he’s never seen the man cry. Even when they’ve been up late, fucked up out of their minds, talking about the kind of shit that only the earliest hours of the morning allow, Aaron hadn’t even shown a modicum of emotion like that. No, Sebastian’s the one who does the crying in this friendship.

He peeks his head out of the breakroom, gaze following Aaron as he hurries down the hall. Aaron’s back heaves, that unmistakable slump in his shoulders that Sebastian can just _feel. _Oh. Oh fuck. He starts in after him.

“Hey.” Aaron just shakes his head, heading away from the elevator. Sebastian had to wind his way down several floors just to get this far, calling after him all the way. “Hey!” Aaron finally slows to a stop, hands fisted at his sides. Sebastian lays a gentle hand on his shoulder. “What happened?” They’re in the lobby of the building, a shiny bank of dinging elevators at their backs. The early afternoon light cuts harshly through the room, reflecting off the long metal sculpture that hangs menacingly above the central fountain. The ceiling goes up several floors, an atrium spilling more bright light down onto them. Sebastian pulls Aaron over to a quieter corner of the room, keeping an eye out to make sure none of the people they pass are from their office. “What the fuck happened?” He asks, once they’re finally away from the lobby’s crowded mouth, his voice like a hiss.

Aaron wipes at his eyes. They’re puffy like he’s been crying for a long time. “Marianne happened, that’s what.” Sebastian freezes, swallowing hard. The air in the lobby feels suddenly so dense and so still it refuses to enter his lungs. Was Marianne doing this to Aaron too? Was Marianne doing _worse _things to Aaron? His hands leave Aaron’s shoulders. It’s right on the tip of his tongue, but this doesn’t feel like the time nor the place. Sebastian opens his mouth to try and say something, anything, to comfort him, but Aaron is already off, heading toward the building’s ornate front doors. “I wanna go get some coffee.” He glances back at Sebastian, stopping for only a second. “Come with me.” Sebastian pauses, looking back at the elevators. He sighs, following Aaron out into the cold afternoon.

Sebastian can barely keep up, almost breaking into a run as Aaron turns a corner, ducking down the stairs to the subway. His voice is suddenly echo-y, vast in the underground station. “No, you know what? Scratch that. I don’t want a fucking coffee. I want a fucking drink.”

“Slow down!” Sebastian calls as Aaron speeds through the station. Joni does this sometimes, as familiar with the subway lines as she is with her own apartment. “Fucking goddamn, Aaron, slow the fuck down!’

Aaron does, but only slightly. He flips around, walking backward. “What good are those long legs if you’re not even fast on them?”

The train is eerily empty for the lunch rush, only a couple people sit a few rows down. The train car smells strongly, _strongly _of piss, but Aaron doesn’t even seem to notice. He’s slumped in his seat, arms and legs crossed, his foot bouncing off the floor. “She’s a cunt.” Aaron’s frown deepens, then he shakes his head almost violently. “Literally the worst bitch of all time and I work in marketing okay?” Aaron lurches forward, head in his hands, both feet bouncing now. “All my bosses have been fucking hell demons, alright? And she puts them all to shame.” Sebastian nods, trying to just listen, to just be there, but his own heart is pounding. He doesn’t know what he’d do if Aaron told him that Marianne was trying to fuck him too, so he lights a cigarette, trying to calm his nerves. Aaron breathes bullishly through his nose. Sebastian doesn’t think he’s ever seen Aaron this upset, this emotive. It’s making him unbelievably edgy. “If I could quit I would. In a motherfucking second.”

Sebastian takes a long drag, blowing it out the side of his mouth. “Why don’t you?” Aaron gives him such a withering look that Sebastian immediately drops it. “So what even happened with her today?”

Aaron reaches shakily for Sebastian, quirking his fingers back toward his face. It takes him a few beats to realize he’s asking for a cigarette. Sebastian quickly pulls the pack from the back pocket of his jeans and hands him one, leaning across the aisle to offer a light. “You know what?” Aaron crosses his legs again, closing his eyes as he takes a long drag of the cigarette, stifling a cough. “I really don’t want to talk about this. Like at all.”

Sebastian tries not to look relieved. “Up to you, man.” The train rumbles loudly down the track, breaking through a wall of light and noise as they emerge from the tunnel. Cold winter sunshine fills the train and Sebastian shields his eyes with his hand. Aaron all but disappears. The train curves along the track, the harbor coming into view. Sebastian ashes his cigarette on the damp train floor, biting back all the things he wants to say, all the confessions he needs to make. 

The bar is the kind of dingy basement affair that makes Sebastian think he shouldn’t touch too many of the surfaces, the kind of place that definitely has a leather night. But Aaron seems right at home, nodding at the bouncer as they head further into the place. He’s making a beeline for the bathroom and Sebastian slows, trying to give him privacy. Aaron turns back with a frown, jerking his head toward the door. Sebastian sighs and follows him in.

Aaron clicks the lock as soon as the door shuts and takes a long, hard look at himself in the mirror. Sebastian leans back against the wall, the cold seeping in through his sweater. It’s a real tomb of a bathroom, all concrete and chrome, dim lighting. Aaron rolls the sleeves of his suit jacket up and hunts around in the pockets of his slack, producing a little plastic baggy, white powder sticking up its sides. Sebastian sighs. “_Dude_.”

“Do not,” Aaron says, holding up a finger in warning, “I just need to chill, okay? Just need to take a little bit of this edge off.”

“_Or _we could, you know, talk about what happened.”

Aaron bumps a line off his finger, then another, wrenching his head back, lids fluttering. Sebastian’s fingers twitch. The energy is _bad _and he wants to tell Aaron to seriously fucking cool it, but he can barely keep his own head on straight. Aaron’s eyes go glassy then readjust and his shoulders roll, looser now. He grins. “Talk about our feelings? Hoo boy, masculinity sure chewed you up and spit you out.”

Sebastian frowns. “What’s that supposed to mean?’

“Nothing.” Aaron pats him on the shoulder. “Thanks for the offer, but that’s gonna be a hard pass from me. Want something to drink.”

Sebastian checks his watch. “It’s noon?”

Aaron snorts. “What are you? Some kind of priest?”

Sebastian orders a tonic water, much to Aaron’s playful chagrin, and watches his friend down two beers one after the other. Sebastian’s stomach growls, but this doesn’t really look like the kind of place that has a kitchen. At least he can smoke in here.

He’s spent the better part of an hour trying to figure out how to steer the conversation away from Aaron’s idle, manic gossip and back toward Marianne. He wants to know more, _needs _to. And not just so he can comfort his friend. Maybe it would give him a better sense of what she’s trying to do to him, a better sense of where everyone stands. He’s about worked something out when Aaron goes rigid, glancing quickly over Sebastian’s shoulder before staring back at his beer, raising his own shoulders to try and obscure his face. “Oh, just my motherfucking luck. Of course, the universe would do this shit to me.”

Sebastian narrows his eyes. “What?” Aaron just shakes his head. Sebastian turns to look behind him. A guy has come in, sitting down the bar, nursing a beer. He squints to get a better look and his heart slams into his chest. “Holy shit.”

“What?”

“Holy shit, I know that guy.”

Aaron raises an eyebrow. “Are you kidding me? You know Josh?”

Sebastian turns back to Aaron. “Josh?”

“I thought you said you knew him?”

Sebastian lights a cigarette, his thoughts moving too fast for him to pick any out. “I mean I don’t _know _him.” Sebastian glances back again, trying to make sure. There’s no doubt. The kid has a memorable face. “He was the guy with Joni that night I picked her up. When she was really fucked up.”

Aaron’s eyes widen. “Oh fuck.”

Sebastian tenses. “What?”

“Just…uh, was she okay?”

Ice races up Sebastian’s body. “Why?”

Aaron shrugs. “I don’t know, man. Josh has had a reputation since forever.”

Sebastian grits his teeth. “What kind of reputation?”

“Scum baggy. Rapey.” Sebastian swallows. “We all went to college together. Floated around in the same groups. Good friend of mine fucked around with him for a while, but eventually things got too rough.”

Sebastian’s ears are ringing now, a headache building steadily at his temples. “What do you mean rough?”

Aaron shrugs. “Mostly when he drank, I think. Like crazy shit in bed. She never like went into detail or anything, but like, I don’t know, he always had a fucked energy.” Aaron shifts so he can get a better look at him before ducking back into Sebastian’s silhouette. “Haven’t seen him in ages though.” He cocks his head at Sebastian. “Where did Joni meet him again?”

“At an art show? I think?” It occurs to Sebastian that he hasn’t asked her about this, not really. Occurs to him that he needs to.

Aaron scoffs “Sounds about right. He’ll talk your head off but the little shit doesn’t know a fucking thing about art. High or low.”

“He didn’t touch her.” It comes out like a question and Aaron seems startled.

“I…I mean I don’t know.” Aaron frowns. “Did you ask her? Did she say anything?”

Sebastian ashes his cigarette. He is boiling over, just brimming with wild energy. “He didn’t touch her.” He says again, this time more firmly, like he’s trying to convince himself. He wracks his brain about that night, trying to remember every inch of her skin, trying to remember if he’d seen a bruise or a cut or anything, if she flinched when he slid his fingers inside of her. There hadn’t been anything like that. Right? _Right? _Sebastian does some mental math. This dude wouldn’t have had time to hurt her. If she went straight from the party to the payphone. And she had right? That’s what she’d said. He tries to remember. He wouldn’t have hurt her in public like that. Right? Yoba, she’d been such a mess that night. So sick, just _so _fucked up. She would have told him if something happened. Right? _Right? _

An icy rain has started to fall, the city shrouded in grey. Aaron waits patiently, standing a little away from the payphone to give him some privacy. She doesn’t answer the first time and he curses loudly, scraping his hair off his face. When she doesn’t answer a second time, he can’t keep the shake from his voice, barely able to wait for the tone to start speaking. “Please pick up, okay? Please, just…just pick up.” He calls again, the last of his quarters clinking into the machine. “Can I come see you? Please. _Please. _Let me come see you.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys not only do I write about anxiety, but I am also crippled by it lol. And school starting again has ramped that motherfucker way way up. I have a few more chapters in the draft stage, so I will be uploading those at my normal quick clip, but there might be a bit of a pause for a little while after that (nothing too crazy! Or maybe not even anything at all you know how it is). You guys and your support really does give me life. It has been such a fun, wild couple of months writing this and interacting with all of you and I can't wait to keep going. You mean the world <3.


	20. Bugging

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Swimming in a cocktail of drugs, neglect, and trauma, Joni finds herself somewhere familiar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a warning: this chapter deals with a mental breakdown and suicidal ideation. It’s gonna get…rough. Take care of yourselves guys. (Remember that comfort tag? It’s gonna be like a post this chapter thing. But I PROMISE, it's gonna be fluffy as shit.)

**TW: This chapter contains detailed descriptions of suicidal ideation. Take care of yourselves and consider not reading if this is something that you think might trigger you. **

Joni called in sick two days ago. Didn’t even have to fake it really. She feels like death, her face swollen almost unrecognizable from crying. Lydia had told her gently that she’d be able to manage fine on her own for a while. To take as much time as she needed. To feel better. She’d emphasized that. _Feel better. _And Joni had the sinister feeling, when she hung up the phone, that it might be the last time she ever talked to Lydia. She wondered, hand lingering on the receiver, if Lydia would ever find out about the book. If it would make sense to her after Joni is gone. _After she’s gone. _These thoughts are slipping in. She’s opened a door she hadn’t realized she’d closed and they are returning bit by bit. 

Leah’s boss had a baby and the restaurant has fallen into the kind of simmering chaos that keeps food service jobs interesting, back to back shifts and long, long nights. It’s more money for Leah, much needed now that she’s moving back to oils as her medium, but it’s completely thrown off the apartment’s ecosystem. Leah’s been a ghost, one axis of their lives coming loose. She’ll flit in only to collapse on her bed, flitting out a few hours later with a thermos of coffee in one hand and a piece of toast in the other. And what poor timing.

Or great timing. Joni’s got room to wallow, here alone. Room to decide if she’s going to do…whatever she’s going to do. Joni knows that the moment Leah emerges back into her normal routine, she’ll sniff Joni out immediately. She’ll see without even having to look that Joni is in absolute, unequivocal freefall. 

And what a feeling that is, as familiar as anything else. Joni gets up from the couch, moving slowly toward the kitchen. The water she pours herself from the sink tastes like nothing and feels like nothing and she moves easily back to the couch. Her skin chafes dry and rough and she’s in desperate need of a shower. She’s been in the same clothes since the coffee shop and they’ve started to stick to her skin. Her stomach is so empty and so angry that she has to breathe through the way it cramps, but even the idea of eating anything at all makes her feel like she’s going to start crying. Like it’s too much. Like she’s trying to seal her body off.

Any thought that edges in is so sharp. Their very existence tiring. Joni takes a valium, rubs some of the powder that falls out with the pill on her gums for good measure.

Joni doesn’t remember leaving the coffee shop that day. She just remembers coming home and laying on her mattress, sinking down on her knees, falling onto her pillow. She hadn’t even bothered to take off her shoes.

She remembers taking the phone off the hook when she woke up. Why? Why on earth had she done that? The sky is an off color. It could be dawn or it could be evening. Joni drifts off, thumbs rubbing circles on the fabric of the couch.

Her dreams are fitful, vaguely sinister. Full of faces she can’t quite make out, tight, hot sensations like brushing up against fabric, against skin. Joni drifts in and out of them, emerging into consciousness gasping like she’s coming up for air, only to sink quickly back down into their depths. Her mouth is cottony and each brief pass back into reality brings with it a fleeting headache that seems to stretch across all the muscles in her head, slithering across her skull like a snake. When she wakes up for the final time, gasping and shaking so violently that her breaths come in ragged sobs, she knows for sure that it’s morning. A deceptively beautiful day, so sunny, so breathtakingly blue. She could call in to work, but she doesn’t. She gets up for more water.

Joni glances out the kitchen window and imagines how far down the street might be, how much it might hurt to smash onto it. The idea isn’t quite appealing, but it doesn’t repulse her. Her mind drifts to the medicine cabinet behind the bathroom mirror. A quieter approach. _No. _She kneads her temples. She needs to feed her cat. She needs to get her head on straight. Why does everything seem so hard? Has it always been so hard? She opens the refrigerator then closes it. The light is too bright, its contents too frightening. What is she even supposed to eat? Fuck, what is she even supposed to do? She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. She’d forgotten how deep pain could run. It’s been so long since she’s felt it like this. No diffuse dread, no sluggish ennui, just sharp, terrible pain cutting through her so relentlessly that she has to extricate it now, _now. _She takes another valium and drops a cup of food in Goose’s dish.

She’s been sitting on the couch for hours now, fingers rubbing over and over the grooves on the cap of her pill bottle. It’s more tempting than it should be. The promise of, if nothing else, emptiness. If you can’t untangle it, nuke it. Joni kneads the heels of her hands into her eyes, like she can massage her brain back to life. Back to normal. But what’s done is done and she’s crawling through rubble again, another man’s ground zero. She can’t do this twice. The first time ran right through her. Joni switches positions, laying onto her back, like maybe the change will dislodge something inside of her, the thing that’s allowed her to keep living. Bring it bobbing back to the surface. The thing she found in the Valley. The _things. _She tries to conjure Sebastian’s touch, Leah’s easy smile, the farmhouse’s floorboards as she walks across them in the soft, early morning light. But these memories are slippery. She can’t hold onto them. And all the darkness simmering inside of her is so brilliantly clear, so sharply defined.

It’s easier not to think at all. It’s easier to just sit and watch the sky through the windows. Watch the sun move slowly across it. She sits still until the shaking starts again, until she stops trying to crawl her way out of this hole and just lets herself fall. It feels like a sick homecoming.

Old memories stick to her like burs. Elliot and Josh become one man talking out of both sides of their mouth, hands reaching and reaching. Yoba, she just needs a minute, just one goddamn minute. She needs some air and all she wants is to be back on the farm. The fresh air, the cocoon of the house. It might give her some perspective and Yoba knows she needs that. Desperately. She can’t just keep falling. She’ll hit so hard, every bone in her body breaking under the strain. The couch feels like a coffin. She gets up, heading to the closest thing she has to that singular peace.

And that’s where Rita finds her, crumpled among the flowers like a clipped bird. Rita doesn’t seem surprised to see her there and Joni figures she probably heard her crying. Because that’s all she’s been doing, crying and whimpering like a wounded animal. She’s so tired, just emptied the fuck out. It’s taken so much energy to keep pulling herself off the edge.

Rita plops down in front of her, head cocked. “Rough day?’

Joni laughs weakly. “Yeah. You could say that?”

“Aren’t you cold?” Joni looks at her flowers. Frost has settled on the edges of their petals, on their tight, shivering buds. She’s failed them too. The thought settles lightly on her, just a drop in the pool she’s trying to climb out of. Rita reaches out to touch Joni’s knee. Joni watches her do it, like she’s separate from her body. “Well, I’d hate to leave you up here all by yourself.” Rita clears her throat. “I was actually uh just heading off to a show. Video installation. North side gallery. I know the artist. She’s cool. Really great.” Rita purses her lips. “Wanna come?’

Joni stares at her, skin around her eyes tight from crying. She can feel her fingers shake as she holds her knees to her chest. She knows Rita can see it, watches as her eyes flit back to them. “Yeah.” Joni’s voice is like an echo. “Okay.” She takes Rita’s outstretched hand, lets her haul her off the concrete.

“So, is it…work, or?”

Joni looks up at Rita across the aisle. The train jolts them both as it turns roughly toward downtown. The floor is slick and cold, almost icy. Joni’s fingers are frigid in the pockets of her coat. “What?”

Rita settles a little in her seat, pulling her legs up. “Just…you know, you seemed upset. Figured it might be…work or something.” She shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I know we don’t know each other that well.” She demurs. “You don’t have to tell me.” 

Joni nods, numb. She lets out a long, shaky breath. “Yeah. Work’s been…really, really stressful.”

Rita smiles encouragingly at her and maybe if Joni weren’t so far away inside herself, she might be comforted. “Well, I hope it gets better.”

“Me too.”

Rita nods, leaning over to root through her purse. She glances around the car. It’s mostly empty and, apparently satisfied that no one is watching them, pulls a baggy out of her purse. “So, um, if you’re uncomfortable like don’t worry about it. Obviously, no pressure but, um, I scored some shrooms the other weekend. Good stuff. Haven’t had a bad trip on them yet. They actually made me feel really relaxed. Like all my worries just…you know.” Rita laughs nervously. Joni must look absolutely off her rocker to make Rita this nervous. She wipes at her eyes, hoping that doesn’t make her look somehow worse. Rita holds the bag out. “Do you want some?”

“Yeah,” Joni says, because _fuck it. _

It takes her two tries to get the bag open. Her shaking fingers clumsy and heavy. The shrooms taste bitter on the way down. Like pills. She’s glad the train is cold. She’s glad the seat is hard. It feels good to feel like shit. Deserved. A relief. Joni closes her eyes and pulls her knees up to her chest. She waits for them to kick in, letting the train jostle her. Yoba knows she doesn’t give a fuck about this art show. She could be anywhere. With anyone. And, hell isn’t that familiar. Full fucking circle. 

Joni knew he would be there and maybe that’s why she agreed at all. That masochistic streak. Maybe she wanted to see him, maybe she wanted to see what would happen, how she would feel. Terrible, of course. That’s how she feels. Numbed out and shaken up all at once. That shouldn’t be possible. And yet.

Rita has broken off from her or maybe Joni has, she can’t remember. But now she’s alone in the gallery, feeling small and grimy and so, so sorry for herself. And there he is, all golden hair and gap-toothed smile. She waves, that sick masochism just taking the wheel, and he squints at her from across the gallery. She can tell he’s trying to place her. She can tell, as he slowly waves back, that he can’t.

When she leaves this time it’s anticlimactic. She isn’t crying. She isn’t running. She is walking calmly and quietly down the street. And in her head, a mantra: it never ends, it will never end.

And what a cycle to live in. What a fate. Joni remembers the pink stain in her panties, remembers Elliot’s long fingers on her phone. The images repeat, like the tape is stuck, wrenching back, starting all over again. Joni shudders, slowing her pace. Her body flips on like a switch and she is _freezing. _Fingers numb; lips and cheeks and nose burning in the cold. Gulls cry above her and the city comes back into focus. She’s made it to the bay, but she doesn’t remember even heading this way, doesn’t know how on earth she got to the financial district this quickly. She spins around, trying to get her bearings back. How long has she been fucking walking?

Joni turns back toward the water, leaning heavily on the retaining wall. The sea expands and contracts, breathing like a big, sleeping animal. She can’t look at it anymore and turns her back to it, fingers gripping the chilly metal chain-link beside the harbor. She closes her eyes, body shaking so badly she’s starting to feel like she might just collapse, might just shake apart. Her ragged breathing so easily becomes sobbing, loud and painful and all she can feel is fear. And grief. Like she’s mourning herself, like she’s already gone. She wants to go home but home is so far away. She wants to crawl into her bed, wants to crawl beside Sebastian. Let him hold her. Let him keep the world at bay. _Sebastian. _

She sobs louder. He feels so out of reach now. Impossibly far away and Joni feels lost in herself. _She feels like something bad is going to happen. Like something bad has happened. Like it hasn’t reached her yet, but it’s on its way_. Hadn’t she heard that in a movie once? Another wave of terror hits her and she lowers herself down onto her knees, the chill from the sidewalk bleeding through her jeans. It feels like she he can never go home again. Like every breath she takes is going to be the very last one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading you guys <3


	21. Flight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It all comes out.

Sebastian’s caller id blinks Joni and he almost doesn’t answer. He’s a little mad. Yeah, maybe a little more than mad. It’s been two goddamn days since she started screening his calls and he’s been wracking his fucking brain. Trying to figure out what the fuck he said or did to deserve this treatment and deciding finally, after two sleepless nights, that he didn’t do shit and settling easy into simmering resentment. But there’s something about her calling, something that pricks just beside his temples, that makes him pick up on the very last ring. “Sebastian?”

He nearly drops the phone. “Leah?”

Leah exhales loudly and the sound makes all the hair on Sebastian’s neck stand straight up. “Oh, thank Yoba you answered. Listen, I know this is gonna sound like I’m losing it, but is Joni with you?” Sebastian has to steady himself on the table. The floor feels like it’s dropping out from under him. There is nothing sinister about Joni not being at home. There are a thousand places she could be, a thousand things she could be doing that are all normal, all fine. But he can just feel it, the earth tilting a little on its axis. His chest hurts. His apartment feels cavernous.

Leah doesn’t say hello when she opens the door. Just ushers him quickly inside and resumes her pacing. She doesn’t even bother to close the front door, so Sebastian turns and presses it gingerly shut. “The phone was off the hook.” Leah worries her braid apart, raking her fingers across her scalp. “Why the fuck would the phone be off the hook?” Sebastian tries not to let that unnerve him. He had a whole taxi ride across town to talk himself down, pull himself together, and he’d done a pretty respectable job of it. She could be at work, she could be with friends. Hell, she could even be up on the roof. It’s cold, sure, but that’s never stopped Joni before. His fingers itch for a cigarette, but he doesn’t like to smoke in their apartment, so he settles instead on stuffing them in the pockets of his jeans. Leah looks like she hasn’t slept well in more than a couple of nights and Sebastian figures that maybe there was some kind of miscommunication, a couple wires crossing. Maybe Joni told her she was gonna be out of the apartment and Leah just forgot. When Sebastian tells her so she deflates. She gets this heavy look on her face that makes Sebastian twitch and sits hard down on the couch. “I just…I think something is wrong.” She won’t look at him.

“Why?” Leah chews her lip. The energy in the apartment pulses and that sense of calm he’d managed to create on the way over disappears entirely. “What the fuck aren’t you telling me?”

Leah glares at him. “Don’t you dare talk to me like that.” 

Sebastian retreats, softening his stance. “Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry.” He shakes his head. “I just…”

“She and Rita went out today.”

“Rita?”

Leah shakes her head. “My…girlfriend, I guess. I don’t know, it doesn’t matter. They went to some art installation in the afternoon.” Sebastian wracks his brain, trying to remember if she’d mentioned Rita, if she’d said something about this art installation. Leah sighs. “I guess they were on shrooms.”

Sebastian cocks his head. “Shrooms?”

“Yeah.”

He curses. “Great, that’s great. That’s just what she fucking needs.”

Leah’s eyes are blazing. “Like that fucking matters right now!”

He scoffs. “It matters a little. I mean if she’s off having some bad trip then…”

“Then what.”

Now it’s Sebastian turn to scrap his hair back. “Then, I don’t know. We’d just need to find her.” Goose is pacing back and forth. Yowling and hissing like Sebastian’s never seen him. He nods at the cat. “What’s his deal?”

Leah sighs again, sounding utterly defeated. “I have no idea. He’s been like that since…” She glances off toward the window. Sebastian follows her gaze. The sky’s so dark that time is shaken up. Could be morning, could be almost night. “since I got home I guess.”

He turns back to face her. “Wait, so she’s not with Rita?”

Leah shakes her head, frowning. “Rita said she just…left. Just left the show, not a word. She called me right away, um, I was work. I mean I didn’t panic. You know Joni.” Sebastian nods. He does. Always elusive, always a moving target. Hard to pin down. “But then when I got home…” She holds herself tightly. “I don’t know. It just seems…I panicked then. But then I thought, okay she’s probably with you.” She nods toward Sebastian. “But…” she swallows hard, “obviously that’s not the case.”

His jaw aches. He’s been grinding his teeth. “Maybe she left a note.” 

Leah’s eyes are watery, wide. “Why would she leave a note when she could just call one of us?”

Sebastian doesn’t have an answer for that, but he needs to move, needs to do fucking _something. _

He makes a beeline for her bedroom. It has an eerie feeling. He’s never seen it without her in it before. It shouldn’t matter. It does. He kicks aside a couple piles of clothes as he makes his way to the center of it. A few deep breaths. That’s all he needs. And then he can think clearly again. He counts to ten on the inhale, ten out. He starts in.

Sebastian doesn’t find a note. He finds a book with a cherry red cover and even though everything inside of him is screaming that it’s a waste of time, there’s something about it. Something he can’t shake. He turns it over and the name on the cover stops him completely in his tracks. And then he’s reading it. And then he’s terrified.

It’s so obviously Joni, so obviously Pelican Town even if all the other villagers have been erased. Well, almost all of them. He recognizes himself immediately. A beast. A dark animal lurking in the shadows on the beach, following Elliot at every turn. Always foiling his plans. His plans for _Joni. _Son of a bitch. Son of a motherfucking bitch. His hands curl easily into fists. Elliot better goddamn pray that they don’t meet again or Sebastian will show him exactly what kind of beast he can be. _No. _He takes a few steadying, meditative breaths. It doesn’t matter right now what Elliot’s doing. Maybe it won’t ever matter. All he needs to do is find Joni. _Fuck. _How long has she had this book? How long had she been letting this rot inside of her. Fuck. _Fuck. _

Elliot fucked up in his characterization. Sebastian’s not the beast he needs to worry about, Leah is. She flips through the first few pages, jaw tight, and Sebastian sees red bloom on the skin of her chest, climbing up her neck. “What the fuck is this?”

“I don’t know.”

Leah cries out, frustrated and scared and Sebastian feels it echo inside of him. “What the fuck is this!?”

He keeps his voice even. “I don’t know.”

“Oh god.” She collapses back onto the couch, holding her head in her hands. “Oh, this is so bad. This is really bad.”

Sebastian scoffs. “Yeah, you think?”

She shakes her head. “Not just that.”

Sebastian frowns “Not just…”

“It’s worse.” She shakes her head, looking off at nothing. “It’s so much worse than that.”

Sebastian feels like his body is slipping out from under him, like the air is so thick it’s forcing him downward. He can’t speak, can barely breathe, he can only wait for Leah to continue. “Josh is back.”

_That _snaps him out of his own fear. Sebastian narrows his eyes. “Josh? How do you know about Josh?” His thoughts are absolutely spinning. Things are clicking together, a forest emerging from the trees.

“She made me promise not to tell you.”

His chest constricts. “What?” Leah just shakes her head and Sebastian can’t stand it. He sits down on the coffee table and puts his hands on her shoulders, trying to keep his voice even. “What did she not want you to tell me?”

“He’s the one who raped her.”

Sebastian recoils. “What?”

Leah averts her eyes. “One of the ones, I guess. Before she came to Pelican Town.” It’d been so long since Joni first told him that. In fits and starts, never really giving him the whole story, but dropping enough sinister breadcrumbs for him to paint a picture of what had happened that night. And in the days after. Those images are seared into his brain, sometimes roaring to life when Joni’s softly asleep beside him. And now he has a face. A name. “She tried to kill herself the last time.”

The room snaps back to him. “Did he touch her again?” Leah shakes her head and Sebastian starts to pace, barely relieved. “Did she seem like…she might…” He can’t say it. Not out loud like just the act of putting in the ether will make it come true. Every nerve in his body is buzzing, desperate to do something, anything.

“I’ve been working so much. I’ve just…I’ve just been so busy the past few weeks.” He’s never heard her voice like this, this stricken and small. Even the morning she’d called him when Joni was at Harvey’s she hadn’t sounded this afraid. She looks up at him, pleading. “I have no idea how she is.”

He sits back down on the coffee table and puts his hands on her shoulders. His heart is pounding but his thoughts are clear. “We’re gonna find her, okay? We’re going to. And if she needs help then we’re gonna get it for her.” Leah nods, her breathing slowing just a little. Sebastian swallows hard and he tries to shore himself up. “We just need to call everybody she knows. Go to the places she goes to. See if she’s been there, see if she _is _there.”

Leah stands, still nodding. “Yeah, yeah. That’s a good idea. Um, I know a coffee shop down the street she always goes to. I can’t call Rita and have her look around the gallery district.” She takes another deep breath and hooks her hands behind her neck. “There, um, there’s a garden supply store on the south end of town that I know she goes to.”

Sebastian pulls his wallet out of his back pocket and fishes a couple twenties out. “For a cab.” He says, handing them to Leah. She takes them, taking another ragged breath, then pulls Sebastian into a hug so tight it’s almost viscous.

She isn’t at the Chinese place and the owner seems thoroughly uninterested in answering any of Sebastian’s increasingly frantic question. He heads over the park in her neighborhood, walking so fast his thighs start to burn. He doesn’t want to start running. Running feels like an admission that something horrible has happened. The park’s mostly empty. Only a few lone dog walkers down by the water. It’s not a surprise. The day is bitterly cold and grey. Sebastian’s hands are shaking. He lights another cigarette.

She isn’t at the corner bodega either, but the guy behind the counter is more than willing to talk. He’d even been a little worried, he tells Sebastian, ringing him up for the Joja cola Sebastian used as a way to get him talking. Joni hasn’t come in for the past couple of days. She’s usually pretty regular about that. Likes sweets. Likes processed shit. Sebastian feels all the color draining out of him.

He downs the soda, panic churning in his gut. The whole city feels damp, threatening sleet. He just needs to walk it off. Just needs to get some air and maybe he can think a little clearer. He rounds a couple of corners, heading nowhere, ducking into alleyways. He can’t help but glance at the dumpsters that line them and his chest tightens. What if this wasn’t about Joni at all? What if the whole thing with Josh, the whole thing with Elliot, hadn’t really affected her like they were all thinking. Maybe something else had happened. Maybe Elliot had- _No. _Panicking is not fucking useful. Not right now. He smokes two cigarettes, one after the other, until his mouth is so dry it hurts to close it. He knocks his head back against the brick. A man comes out into the alley, tossing his trash into the nearest dumpster. Sebastian can see into the shop with the back door open like that. Rows and rows of books. Oh shit. Oh _shit. _Of course. He hurries back onto the street, hailing the first cab he sees.

He calls Leah from the payphone a block from Lydia’s shop and tells her to meet him, but he can’t wait anymore. The shop is eerily quiet, eerily calm. Almost empty even though it’s early evening, even though the streets are clogged with rush hour traffic. Dust motes float lazily by and he can see Lydia behind the counter at the other end of the shop. She’s regarding him closely and his chest tightens again. “Hi,” Sebastian says, voice cracking, drumming his fingers on the counter. Lydia nods, pretending to be very engrossed in a shipping manifest. “You might remember me from-“

“I remember you.” She clicks a pen open, jotting down a few notes on the manifest’s header. The ornate rings on her fingers glitter in the light from the lamp beside the register.

He ducks down so they’re level with each other. Lydia glances up at him. “Please help me. Please, I…” He trails off, realizing suddenly that he’s started to cry. Silent tears rolling down his cheeks. He backs up, wiping them away. “Listen, I know this is odd. I’m just looking for…I’m looking for Joni and if you’ve seen her or have heard from her…”

Lydia sighs, straightening up. “She’s been here for a few hours.”

Sebastian tenses “She’s here?”

“Yes.” He rakes his fingers through his hair, exhaling loudly. “Oh, thank Yoba.” Then he catches sight of the look in Lydia’s eyes. There’s something off in it, just slightly. He frowns. “Is she…is she okay?”

He doesn’t see her at first, squeezing past stacks of boxes, trying not to disturb anything, wary of the dust. And then there she is and he is so relieved to just see her at all that his shoulders release. And then he looks again. And then he shores himself up.

She looks so small, sitting with her whole body curled up on a folding chair beside a cabinet overrun with paperwork. Her fingernails are raw and red and he can tell that she’s been chewing at them. He’s never seen her hair this limp, never seen her clothes this rumpled. Her pupils are enormous, eclipsing her pale eyes entirely and she has no reaction when she lifts her head to look at him. “Joni.” She lets out a long, slow breath and she sounds ancient, like she’s been living for a thousand years. He keeps his voice soft, moving slowly, winding his way through the stacks of books, through the old filing cabinets. “Where have you been?”

“Here.” And then her breath catches, like she’s only just stopped crying and her diaphragm is still shuddering. And then she starts to cry again, eyes darting like she’s waking up from a terrible dream. Her nails dig hard into the skin of her bare arms and she starts to shake so violently, Sebastian’s worried she’ll knock the rickety chair over. “I need help.” She says, through sobs. “I think I need real help again.”

He feels like a little boy. Like a child. He kneels down in front of her. She reaches for him, pulling him toward her. He wraps his arms around her, holding her head as she cries into the skin of his neck. The world slows to a stop. He hasn’t felt fear like this since that crisp morning in the forest when his father’s blood sprayed his boots. But he’s older now. He’s older and he doesn’t have to be afraid. And he can hold her hand, he can walk her out of the fear too. “We’ll get you whatever help you need.” And the dam breaks. Like that was all she needed to hear. Her muscles go slack in his arms. “It’s okay.” He tells her, breathing in the scent of her hair. She smells like sweat, like she’s been rained on, like the harbor. He wonders briefly if she’d gone in, tried to make a break for it, tired of all this dry land. Her skin is cold enough. “I’m gonna take care of you.” He tells her and it feels easy. And it feels true. She heaves against him, all her weight leaning on him now, like it’s too much for her to carry. But he’s strong enough. He can hold her up for a while. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading, you guys <3


	22. Institutions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A full circle

Sebastian’s not sure he’s ever seen Leah shake, ever seen her lose her cool really at all, but she’s keeping her hands so tightly between her thighs on their cab ride home, that he’s sure she’s trying to keep them still.

She’d nearly crumbled when she saw Joni on the sidewalk, pulling her into a huge so tight Joni had to squirm out of it. He’d watched quietly from a distance, trying to give them space and he’d felt the sort of pleasant numb he used to feel after waking up from a nightmare, after realizing the dream wasn’t real.

He still feels a little numb, but the relief is quickly diminishing. The city whizzes past them now, a long line of light. Their driver takes the high curve of the overpass around the financial district faster than he should and they all brace, tensing up. Sebastian knows which shimmering, glass building is his office. He can’t look at it. The cab crests down toward the harbor and the change in elevation gives Sebastian faint vertigo. He looks down at Joni, wondering if she feels the same.

She’s dried out, emotionally spent, and it gives her an almost serene look. But Sebastian knows better. He can feel her soft trembling in the spots where their bodies touch. It’s an improvement, regardless. Sure, she looks like she might blow away in a strong wind, but at least she doesn’t look anymore like she’s about to bolt.

She’s laying down, head on his lap with the sort of finality that has started to unnerve him. He tilts his head to make sure she hasn’t fallen asleep. Her eyes are hazy, looking straight at the back of the cab’s front seat. Sebastian sits back in his seat and takes a deep breath. He tries not to worry too much about how still she is as he brushes his fingers across her temples, but dread manages to work its way back under his skin. He’s just about to say something, or jostle her, like tapping on the glass of a fish tank, just looking for a reaction, any reaction, when Joni reaches up to take his hand. She presses it gently against her lips. He settles.

The windows have iced over, the cab’s ancient heater stuttering the faster they drive, blowing hot, dry air into the car. It isn’t ideal, but it is almost peaceful. Just the quiet drone of the radio and the soft whoosh of cars passing them on the highway. He can hear her breathing, puts a hand on her ribs so he can feel it too. He can’t help but feel, in the long moments that pass as they drive, like some horrible crisis has just been averted. Like they are all in a liminal space, trying to shake off the dregs of what could have been. Sebastian doesn’t linger too long on those thoughts. Others come quickly to replace them. Elliot, mostly. Elliot’s book. He wants to ask her. About Josh too. He imagines tossing the book at her feet. _What the hell is this, _he’ll ask. He won’t budge, won’t give her a goddamn inch until she’s told him everything, until she’s laid it all out. Sebastian strokes her hair, lets it curl around his knuckles. It’s a fantasy, that’s all. He’s not going to ask her. Not today at least. He hopes she’s warm enough, hopes she can borrow some of his heat.

Leah makes the call because Joni asks her to and both of them would probably lay down and die if she asked them to right about now. Sebastian would, at least. Anything. _Anything. _

Harbor View Hospital sounds cheerier than he expects and Sebastian wonders if it actually has a view of the water. He hopes it does, he knows how much Joni likes it. Sebastian holds her tightly to his chest, the two of them swaying softly in the living room, watching Leah on the phone. He doesn’t want to let go, doesn’t want to relinquish her to whatever is waiting there. But he has to. He knows that. It’s still difficult. He isn’t even going to be able to spend the night beside her and he wants to call a time out. _Hold on now, just give me a second._ _Just one. _But he can feel Joni still shaking against him. He holds his tongue.

Leah takes a step back from the table, holding the phone to her chest. “You’re not being sectioned right?”

Joni shakes her head. “Voluntary.” Her voice is thin and quiet.

“Right.” She puts the phone back to her ear, her voice fading into the background as he lays his cheek on the crown of Joni’s head. After a few beats, she hangs up the phone and starts to unbraid her hair. Funny that he’s known her this long, that he can tell when she’s trying, and failing, to keep her cool. Sebastian wonders if Leah can tell the same about him. “They said they have a bed for you. I told them we’d be down in like…an hour.”

“I don’t remember what I’m supposed to bring.” Joni is standing in the middle of her room, looking more lost than maybe he’s ever seen her. She clutches Goose to her chest and, for once, the cat is limp in her arms, letting her rock him. Her cheeks shimmer with tears. She’s standing in the dark, the room lit only by the grey sky outside, and Sebastian walks back to switch on the light. He watches her flinch.

She lets him put a gentle hand on her back, just the lightest touch. Her muscles twitch under his palm then he feels them release. He rubs his thumb back and forth along her sweater. _Good, _he wants to tell her, _let it all go. _“What did you bring last time?”

“Nothing.” The word echoes in the room. A siren rushes past and the muscles in her back clench again. Sebastian moves behind her more fully, both hands on her shoulders now, and starts to massage the tense muscles at the base of her neck. “I went straight from the emergency room.”

Sebastian swallows. “Nobody brought you anything?”

“I didn’t tell anyone I was there.”

“Well…” _You’re not alone this time, _he wants to say, but doesn’t. He tries instead to say it with the way he’s touching her, running his thumbs up her neck, trying to work out all the tension. “Pack what you think you want and if you need anything else, just give me a call. I’ll bring it to you.” The way she looks over her shoulder at him, the way her eyes waver, is heartbreaking. The relief. The gratitude. _This is the bare minimum, _he wants to tell her, _this is the very least that you deserve. _

Time is still in the shower. Like it always is. They always seem to find their way back here. Obscured in steam, their bodies bare, almost primal the way they wash each other. Their touches light. They rock back and forth in each other’s arms, they break away, but they always find each other again. The water is nearly going cold when Joni finally speaks. “I wish I could have done this on my own.”

He, at first, doesn’t hear it. Or doesn’t understand it. He tries to imagine what she means, but can’t. “You did.” He says, and then with more force. “You _are_. And we’re doing this together”

Joni makes a sound like could be a laugh, but sounds closer to the beginning of a sob. “Joke’s on you then, isn’t it? What a nightmare you walked back into. And to think you were so close to being free.”

His throat feels thick and tight. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Joni tucks her head into his chest and he has the sinking feeling that she’s doing this because she thinks it might be the last time she can. “You could be at a wine bar with some sleek office chick right now instead of…”

“Instead of what?” He asks gently. She doesn’t say anything, just rests her head on his bare chest. Her skin is still clammy, even in the hot spray. “Wine bars are overpriced and shitty” He manages to pull a laugh out of her with that. “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.” Joni holds her breath.

Leah drives. Sebastian sits in the back, holding Joni the whole way. When they round out onto the outskirts, city falling away into squat suburbs, Joni sniffles. Just a single, quiet noise. His heart breaks in two.

It’s not what he expects, though maybe his expectations were more the providence of horror movies and ghost stories than anything rooted in reality.

Harbor View looks like any other hospital. Smells, when they walk inside, like the family practice he’d gone to for years as a child. Antiseptic, sure, but also warm, like hay or the soft fabric of an old quilt. The light here is a little golden and there’s no sense of the horrible dread he was sure he would feel, that he could feel wafting off Joni as they drove. It feels calm. Safe. And when his shoulders relax, he realizes that at least some of the terror he’d been ascribing to Joni was actually coming from him.

He and Leah wait as Joni fills out paperwork. She seems together. So together that he almost wants to tell her to forget this, to just head back home with him. That they’ll figure this out on their own. He stays where he is, fingers itching for a cigarette. “She’s gonna be fine,” Leah says and it takes Sebastian a beat to realize that it’s really a question.

“Oh yeah,” he says, hands deep in his pockets, jaw working nervously, “Yeah, she’s gonna be just fine.” Leah nods like her neck is broken.

They watch Joni take a deep breath, watch her nod as a nurse approaches her, as they talk quietly to each other. She and the nurse both glance back at the two of them, then Joni nods again, heading over. Sebastian straightens up, his whole body suddenly at attention. Joni has her hands in her pockets, bobbing slightly on the balls of her feet. “So, um…this is it then?”

“How long are they keeping you here?” Leah’s question comes out harried, a little rushed.

Joni glances away, looking back at the nurse’s station. “72 hours. Maybe longer. I’ll let you know.” She swallows hard. “I need to call Lydia and see if…well,” she shrugs, “ you know.” She sniffles and Sebastian has the sudden overpowering urge to pull her tightly to him. But the nurses are watching and the whole scene is strange, like something out of a movie. “Leah, will you…” Joni gestures vaguely, “with Goose.”

“Of course.” She nods again, too enthusiastic. Her voice edging a little on hysterical. “Of course. The two of us will be just great.” Leah pulls her into a rough hug and Sebastian watches Joni’s hands fist in Leah’s coat.

He wishes they could stay like this forever. The three of them suspended here. Joni pulls away and Sebastian’s chest tightens. Time feels suddenly as though it’s sped up. He doesn’t want this. Doesn’t want to say goodbye. Not like this. Fuck, not like this. He just got her back. But he shores himself up and opens his arms for her. She falls into them and his head falls heavily onto her hair. It’s so soft on his skin, smells citrusy from the shower. Will she have what she needs in the hospital? Will the rough soap dry out her skin? He can feel her nails through his shirt, holding tightly onto him and he feels too the way her eerily calm front is starting to break. Joni’s breath starts to get more ragged like she’s about to cry again. She pulls away to tuck her face into the crook of his neck, high up on her tiptoes. “Don’t let my flowers die.” His breathing is ragged now too, tears threatening in his eyes.

Did she let he would let them die? Did she think he would forget them?

“I won’t, I won’t.” He holds her face in his hand and leans down to kiss her long and hard. A few of the nurses avert their eyes. When he pulls away, his grip on her face tightens. He wants her to hear this. To _understand _it. “We will all be here. All of us. We will all be here waiting for you” Leah nods quickly, backing him up. She’s a little wide-eyed. Joni nods too, but it’s the barest of gestures, like she’s straining under the weight of her thoughts, struggling to pay attention. Her eyes snap back to him, clear now, and stretches up to press a soft kiss on the corner of his lips. She pulls away and reaches out to squeeze Leah’s shoulder. And then she’s gone, her back to them.

He watches her walk away, a nurse rubbing comforting circles on her back. “Should we just…go then?” Leah fidgets with the straps of her overalls.

“Um, in a minute.” He heads quickly to the nurse’s station, tapping impatiently on the desk. The nurse behind it holds a phone to her chest and mouths ‘yes?’ Sebastian clears his throat and leans down. “Is there, um, a time when I can call her?” She nods to a sign just beside the phone bank. _Phone call/visiting hours. _“Thanks.” He takes a pen from the desk and writes the times hastily on the back of his hand.

The nurse who led Joni away returns, doing a quick double-take before approaching, patting him gently on the shoulder. “We’ll take very good care of her.”

He nods, but his throat is tight, his heartbeat so loud and angry in his ears. “Is there, um, is there a bathroom I could…” He trails off the but the nurse nods down the hall.

It’s a tight little spot, smelling like antiseptic and bathed in fluorescent light. It’s stark but strangely comforting. There’s a slot to put urine samples in. There’s a button by the toilet to call a nurse. He splashes cold water onto his face. He’s shaking. He can’t stop shaking. He feels a little sick.

Leah is waiting for him out front, arms crossed in front of her. The sky has cleared some, long rays of sun poking through the dense, gray clouds. A few birds call from the heavy oaks out by the parking lot. Leah sighs. “God, this is…what a fucking year this has been..” He can only nod, lighting a cigarette. He inhales deeply, angling the exhale away from Leah. “Let’s go somewhere.” She says, sounding a little calmer. “Get something to eat.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading <3


	23. Fog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the stillness of the hospital, old memories resurface.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Descriptions of past sexual assault
> 
> Alright, so little update: I have almost all the rest of this fic charted out (and semi drafted) so I think updates should be pretty consistent? ALSO I promise guys, once I get these loose ends tied up, you’re gonna be sick to death of the fluff I got planned.

The meds feel gentle. Like she’s wrapped in a towel that still has just the faintest warmth from the dryer. A fleeting warmth. Not quite pleasure, but a quiet ease. The nurse assured her they will be temporary, just something to get her stabilized. It makes no difference to Joni, but the sudden realization of that apathy, of how quickly and efficiently the meds must be working, sends a sharp spike of panic through her. The rec room is suddenly shrinking, the space, the air, rapidly disappearing. The whiteness of it, the dull nothing. And the way she’s trapped inside. Tethered. Helpless. Joni can hear her heart and she wants to bolt. Wants to run screaming from the room, to collapse out onto the sidewalk, to let the sun beat down warm and hard on her. The temperature is always so neutral in the hospital. Just cold enough to prickle the skin, too warm to complain. She’s desperate for sensation. Blistering heat or brutal cold. For anything. Pain, pleasure. _Anything._

The feeling is fleeting. Joni settles back easily as the medication cocoons her. Her lungs expand. The terror uncoils lazily inside of her, drifts off. She watches it go and leans back into the armchair where they’ve set her up.

The rec room is subdued, quiet in the late afternoon. A few other patients mill about. Joni can hear a couple of them chattering at the phone bank. She closes her eyes, stretches out her fingers. She feels long, infinite. And she feels better. If only by inches.

The squat tv in front of her plays a quiet cooking show. Something about béchamel, something about al dente pasta. It reminds her of Robin’s cooking, Evelyn’s cakes, the way Pierre’s shop always smelled like the tart skin of green apples, the yeasty scent of bread rising. If she squints, Joni can almost imagine that she’s watching the Queen of Sauce. Can almost imagine that the hospital’s cool linoleum is the gnarled hardwood of the farmhouse and that she could just stand up, just take a few steps and she’d be out on the porch, breathing in the scent of wood smoke and heather. A few more steps and she can feel grass between her toes. The feeling is so warm, like slipping into a bath. Joni closes her eyes and lets it linger.

The mess room is eerily quiet. A few of the longer-term residents have their tables and their cliques and Joni listens to them chat quietly. In another corner, the patients with diet plans sit sullenly, staff members on either side of them. Joni pushes her food around on her plate, almost wishing that someone would sit with her, would try to make some small talk. She isn’t sure if she ever wanted that last time. Can’t quite remember. She tries to remember too if it was this quiet last time and finds that she can’t. Hardly at all. The whole hospital seems different, especially now that the meds are starting to wear off, and she wonders if that means she’s different now. Worse or better, she doesn’t know. The sun sets big and yellow like a simmering yolk and as night starts to creep over the hospital, a new feeling settles in. One that she can’t really name. Sharp and so heavy that she brings her fingers to her chest to try and keep it contained. Loneliness, maybe, but it’s sharper, a new variety. Joni kneads at her temples. She’s tired like she hasn’t slept in days and all she wants to do is let it overtake her. It’s a softer desire now, one no longer tinged in melancholy. Just a gentle coaxing.

The single room was, at first, a blessing. Peace. Privacy. But now, in the pale blues of a night that just won’t settle into darkness, it feels cavernous. All the light that filters through the narrow window beside her bed is distorted by the thin sheet of ice that has settled on its glass.

Inside, the heater hums softly. A slow stream of dry air. The radiator at the farmhouse never felt like this, cotton-mouthed and parched. It rattled sure, but that heat felt like a hearth, like a steady, warm burn. Joni’s feelings are coming back in slow waves, crashing softly onto her. Little pinpricks of longing, a steady hum of embarrassment. The room feels heavy.

She doesn’t remember much after the pier. Dust motes and Sebastian’s nimble fingers on her shoulders. The scented steam of her shower, the tile slick under her bare feet, and the waning smell of oil paint, the buttons of Leah’s overalls digging in through her thin sweater. And then standing alone in the hallway, waiting for the nurse to return. Everything suddenly painfully clear, like turning on a light.

Joni rolls over on her side. The mattress is so thin she can feel the metal slats underneath. She wants to be held. By him. Only by him and the urge to call him is so incredible that she sits up in bed, moved to action. She glances over at the bedside table. The clock blinks three am and in this new, old world there’s a window for making calls, for reaching out to the rest of the world. And she’s outside of it. It makes her feel caustically homesick. Trapped like she had earlier that afternoon. A fish circling a bowl that’s too small and too empty and the distance to freedom feels so insurmountable that she can’t even begin to chart a path. All she can do is wait for the sun to rise.

In the hospital, the light is the same color no matter what time of day it is. Reflecting just the barest hint of warmth. Just a taste. Dr. Rainier is saying something but Joni isn’t listening. She’s watching that anemic light slip over the curve of the city, watching the way the sun reflects in the skyscrapers off in the distance. She fidgets, then speaks, cutting Dr. Rainier off in the middle of a sentence. Her voice tastes acidic. “I just don’t know how I let this happen again.” Dr. Rainier sits back in her chair, letting her notebook rest softly on her lap. The pause Joni has created has opened up a great, yawning chasm and now she is scrambling to fill it, the words pouring out of her mouth in a frenzy. “It wasn’t that bad. It really wasn’t that bad. I could have worked it out.”

Dr. Rainier smiles at her. “You did work it out. You’re here. You didn’t hurt yourself. I would say you worked it out just fine.”

“I didn’t want it to be like this”

“Why not?” Joni says nothing, turns her attention back out the window. Dr. Rainier crosses her long legs, puts her notebook on the coffee table and folds her hands in her lap. She’s always so serene, always so sharply dressed. It makes Joni feel a certain way. Jealousy or longing, she isn’t sure.“Let’s try compassion on. How does that sound? Compassion for ourselves?”

Joni shrugs her off, but the thought settles. She tucks it away for later, the idea of it feels sweet, almost motherly. That’s too close to the bone. Joni changes the subject. “I don’t think I was suicidal.”

“I would agree with that. Based on what you’ve told me.” She leans on her arm, looking at Joni through her thick glasses. “So why did you come back?” Joni bristles. “No?” Joni picks at the skin around her thumb. “Okay then, why did you stop our phone sessions?’

Joni straightens her legs out, planting her feet on the floor, suddenly conscious of her dirty sneakers on the cream upholstery of the chair. “I started having dreams…when I was seeing you.”

She hasn’t told anybody that. Barely admitted it to herself.

“And what were the dreams about?”

“My mother.”

The apartment is just the same as she remembers it. Dusty, cluttered. Full of joy. Brightly patterned tapestry blowing in the open windows. Her parents and their hippy drapes. Probably scavenged them from Goodwill. The thick smell of baking bread wafting from the kitchen into the hall. The hum of the dehydrator. The way apples smell almost too sweet when they’re drying out.

Joni feels too tall for the apartment. And too old. And when she sees the smallest version of herself perched rod straight on the living room couch, prayer flags hanging haphazardly over the back, she knows that this is a dream.

She feels like a ghost in her own memories, here in this childhood apartment. Like she doesn’t belong. Something is off in the air and she takes a few steps toward the living room. Her smaller self doesn’t even move, not a muscle. She’s rigid and straight on the couch, eyes glued to the cartoons playing on their little black and white tv. She looks impossibly small, impossibly stiff. Like a rabbit hiding in the shadow of a bush, a still kind of fear. A prickle of dread rushes up her body.

Joni frowns. It’s the sound. That’s what’s off. She’s just noticed it now. A thump, thump, thumping from the washroom like the dryer is unbalanced. But they never owned a dryer. Hell, Joni’s dad probably still line dries all his clothes. She can remember her first set of period stained underwear swaying humiliatingly in the breeze. That homemade soap never got stains out quite like the chemicals.

Joni takes her hands from the back of the house and turns slowly around. The hallway is empty because of course it is, but Joni still exhales, relieved, like she expected something horrible to be waiting for her. The thumping continues, getting faster, less rhythmic. She heads slowly down the hall, that dread growing. It has its own heartbeat, the faintest fluttering inside of her.

She closes her eyes when she reaches the washroom, hand gripping the cool doorframe. She can’t open them, can’t bring herself to, because even though she knows what she’s going to see, even though it’s all clicked together now for real, she doesn’t want to look. The thumping continues, more fleshed now with the slick slapping sound of skin against skin. Her eyes slowly open and all she can see is a man’s bare back, his jeans around his knees. A man she doesn’t know or only faintly remembers. A crooked smile. A knock at the door. Joni sucks in a sharp breath before slamming her hand over her mouth. But this is a dream, right? They can’t hear her. It is a dream, she assures herself, even though it smarts like a memory.

Her mother’s legs are pale. They twitch like the legs of an insect, jerking with each thrust. Her toes are splayed like she’s in terrible, terrible pain.

Joni backs up until she hits the wall, her hands finding the pattern of the wallpaper. She can’t breathe. She can’t move. She can only watch. Her mother’s fists clench and unclench in time with his thrusts and the sound she is making are like a wounded animal. Each one hits Joni right in the throat, each one more painful than the last.

The man shifts and her mother’s long, gossamer hair falls over her shoulders, her face coming into view. Her eyes are scrunched so tightly closed that her whole face is knotted. Her cheeks are slick, catching the light. She looks like she’s holding something delicately between her teeth, lips closed gingerly. So focused. She looks like she’s trying to hold the whole universe together.

Joni wakes up gasping, the room still as blue as when she last left it. The clock blinks five am. Hours of half-darkness to go. There’s an echo inside of her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading guys <3


	24. Winterize

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian does his best to make things alright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Real talk guys: I wrote this after a long night out. Not quite a Joni and Sebastian night out, but it’s gonna be a rough morning lol. So like if there are egregious grammatical mistakes I am so sorry

Sure, it’s possible that Sebastian went into this swinging. It’s _possible _that the memory of that night, of Shane spitting at his feet, is at the forefront of his mind and okay, _maybe, _there’s just a bit of gloating in his voice when he calls the farmhouse from Joni’s apartment. Maybe his hello is a little bit of a fuck you.

And Shane doesn’t disappoint. He makes a sound that’s somewhere between a scoff and a curse and Sebastian can imagine him throwing his head back, eyes rolling. He’s back in high school in an instant, back to when the two of them were always at each other’s throats. The fragile peace Joni brokered between them nothing but a distant memory. “Oh, what the fuck.”

Sebastian tries not to smile, tries not to feel just entirely smug. Goose brushes up against his pant leg, pawing lightly at his sock feet. The apartment smells like Joni. Earthy, honeyed, a little sweet. Smells like Leah too, the sharp, almost bitter scent of oil paints, the powdery smell of freshly stretched canvas. It smells like the closest thing he’s ever known to home. Smells safe. Makes it easier for him to pounce. “Hey man, it’s Sebastian.”

“Hell, I know who the fuck it is.”

“Nice to hear from you too.” Shane scoffs. “Hey man,” Sebastian stands, leaning against the wall, phone cradled between his shoulder and cheek, examining his fingernails, “just calling to check in.” Sebastian fiddles with the pen beside the pad of paper they’ve got beside the phone. He’s suddenly testier than he should be. Feeling brightly vindictive in a way he really should not be. But he can’t stop thinking about the way Shane looked at him from Joni’s porch, how he’d basked in Sebastian’s devastation. It feels uncomfortably like jealousy as he tries hard not to imagine Shane inside of her, Shane’s lips on her neck, hands tight on her thighs. It feels inappropriate, possessive. Wrong. He’s itching for a cigarette.

“Checking in, huh? Why are _you _checking in?”

“Joni asked to call you for an update on the farm. Trying to stay on schedule and all.”

“Where is she?” And then even more blustery. “I want to talk to her.”

Sebastian irritation spikes. _Listen you little prick, _he wants to say, _fucking listen, you are _lucky _Joni keeps you around at all. You are so very motherfucking lucky, so don’t you dare talk to me like that, you fucking- _Sebastian grits his teeth. “She isn’t here.” He takes a steadying breath. “But you can give me the update and I’ll be sure to convey it to her.”

“Is she hurt or something? What’s going on?”

“No, she’s fine.” Which she is, as far as he can tell. He’d ducked out of a meeting early to make sure he called her right when visiting hours started that first day after she’d gone in. So Joni wouldn’t have to wait even a minute, wouldn’t have any time at all to even entertain the idea that he might not call her, that he wasn’t spending pretty much all his conscious hours thinking of her. She’d sounded lucid. A little down, maybe, a little introspective, but he’d managed to make her laugh and when she told him that she loved him just before they hung up, it sounded hopeful, maybe even happy. “But she’s busy, so she asked me to take the update this month.”

“So what? Are you guys fucking again or something?”

Sebastian’s nostrils flare. “I’d say we’re more than that.” The other line clicks. Sebastian holds the phone away from him, a little stunned. The son of a bitch hung up on him. “Fucking baby,” he mutters, setting the phone back in the receiver. Then, all at once, guilt rushes up to greet him. _Shit. _What the fuck is he supposed to tell Joni now? That he pissed Shane off so bad he doesn’t have an update for her? He should have been gentler, less of a prick. _Fuck. _He picks the phone back up and dials the number he knows by heart. There’s no answer.

They’re working fast. Hell, they need to be working even faster with the way the temperature is falling rapidly around them, sky an ominous gunmetal grey, the harbor eerily still. They have hats pulled down over their ears, scarves wrapped tightly around their faces as they scurry around on the roof. Every so often Sebastian reminds them to be careful. “Precious cargo,” he says more than once. Leah rolls her eyes, but as he watches her adjust her grip on one of the terra cotta planters, he reminds himself that she takes this just as seriously as he does. That Joni is precious to her too.

They both know these flowers aren’t just plants. Even if they weren’t Joni’s, he’d probably feel that way. He’s learned so much from her. Knows now that they are precious heirlooms, whole lineages unfolding between their petals. A tangible, direct line to the past. Last fall, he watched Joni for hours as she harvested their seeds. So intricate and tedious, like crafting a line of code. He’d watched her carefully uproot the perennial bulbs, wrapping them in butcher paper, tucking them like eggs in a nest in the cool, dry darkness of the crawl space. Joni’s mother taught her these things, she told him, and he’d fallen so deeply in love as he watched her nimble fingers work, bottom lip tucked between her teeth in concentration.

So he’ll make sure that everything is in order for her. Better than in order. He’ll pick her up from the hospital in a few days, bring the big coat his mother gave her last winter and make sure she’s warm enough. He’ll brew her a big pot of good coffee, not whatever swill they’ve probably got her drinking in the hospital. He’ll lay her down, her hair tangling in the leaves of her flowers, sunlight skittering across her tawny skin. He’ll remind her how good she can feel, show her just how alright everything really is going to be.

He’d bought a thick duvet from one of the big department stores on the edge of the city, a set of soft, cotton sheets. The kind of things he’d dreamed about having as a kid, the kind of things he’d never thought he’d be able to afford. He’d arranged them on her bed, did a couple loads of her laundry, spent a whole afternoon scrubbing the windows in her bedroom, sealing up the edges so the cold air couldn't get through. Just to take his mind off everything, just to take the edge off. “Hey space cadet,” Leah bumps him with her hip as she slips into the apartment, arms wrapped around a heavy, ceramic pot, “where’d you go off to?”

Sebastian chuckles, brushing a few stray curls from his forehead. “Just thinking.”

“No shit.” Leah sets the pot down by the couch. The living room is quickly turning into a meadow, awash in flowers. The herbaceous scent of their bare stems only growing stronger as the warm apartment air wakes them back up. Rita files in after Leah, gingerly holding two smaller pots. Sebastian recognizes the long stems of lilies, their old buds cut off at the top, just like Joni showed him last winter.

He still isn’t sure who Rita is to Leah exactly. They’re fucking, that much he knows. She’d told him so, but she didn’t really have to, not by the way they look at each other when one of them enters the room. But Leah seems skittish as a deer whenever he asks if the two of them are together. He knows better than to press. Rita’s a little avant-garde for his taste, a little curated, but she seems nice. She smiles shyly at him as she sets the pots on the dining room table and he returns it. “So what is it, huh?”

Sebastian looks over with a frown. Leah cocks her head, hip propped against the back of the couch. “What?”

“What were you thinking about?”

Sebastian smiles weakly, looking off down the hall. “Take a wild guess.”

Leah’s face softens. “I talked to her yesterday, you know?”

“Oh yeah?”

“She sounded good….I think.”

“Did she sound tired to you too?” He doesn’t even want to think of how little she’d been sleeping before the hospital. Hopes she's getting a little more in now. He and Leah had gone to an Italian place over by the hospital after they dropped her off, compared notes over plates piled high with pasta, meatballs the size of their fists. Neither of them had picked up on the things that seemed so obvious in retrospect and if they had, they’d brushed them off. 

Leah nods. “Yeah, very tired.” She looks up at Sebastian. “What do you think they have her doing in there?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t have the first clue.”

The loud creak of the front door quiets them both. “I think this is the last of them,” Rita says softly, setting a heavy pot of wilting gladiolas down in the threshold of the apartment.

Sebastian stuffs his hands in the pockets of his jeans, surveying their work. “Is there anything else we need to do?”

“What like winterizing stuff? Figure Joni can do it when she gets out. She’s the best at it, you know.”

“No, like…I don’t know. Does she have any florist stuff lined up?” It occurs to him, as he asks, that she hasn’t talked about that hardly at all since they’ve gotten back together.

“You know, it’s funny.” Leah grunts as she drags one of the pots a little closer to the couch. “Everybody kept telling her she needed to move to the city, but shit has really dried up since we got here. People think she’s less legit now that she’s not on a farm or something.” Sebastian frowns, trying to process. The thought sticks like a burr in his mind but he can’t really parse it. “Well, I’ve worked up an appetite.” Leah wipes her hands on her overalls, tracking dirt down the denim.

Sebastian lets the thought go, kneading a sore spot at the base of his neck, flinching as the joint cracks. “Let’s order some food.”

Leah snorts. “What kind of budget do you think we’re on here?”

“My budget.” Sebastian reaches for his wallet in the back pocket of his jeans. “What are you in the mood for?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading <3. Your comments and kudos are IT for me, truly.


	25. Breezes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joni realizes that she’s grown into someone entirely different.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: discussions of suicide and sexual assault

Height of summer. Sweat sticky all down her bare legs. Sun like a big lemon in the sky, scalding everything it touches. So hot the air seems to evaporate before it can enter her lungs, the heat so thick that Joni can almost see it as it wafts in through the open window. She feels smaller than she should, curled up on the window sill, like she’s outgrown her own body.

Joni brushes back the tapestry hung above the window, blinking as her eyes adjust to the searing sunlight. The parking lot is a sea of sun-bleached asphalt and the heat rolls off it in waves. Their apartment is on the second floor of a squat, stucco building built sometime in the early sixties. Last renovated sometime in the early sixties too, Joni remembers, as she picks at the peeling wallpaper. Their landlord called them “terrace apartments”, now they’d probably be mistaken for an old rundown motel. Now. _Right._ The realization settles strangely inside her. She’s dreaming again. Joni stands and grows feet in an instant, the room warping a little around her before snapping back to its original shape. She’s herself again. Long bodied and older. Joni tries to remember if her dreams have always been this vivid. She doesn’t think so and the apartment becomes suddenly very eerie. Like the ghost of a place.

She pads across the apartment, surprised by its emptiness. Expecting to run into her younger self, her mother. Anyone. Her footsteps echo loudly as she walks. Without really thinking, she heads down the hall toward the narrow balcony out back. The fresh air isn’t as soothing as she hoped it might be and as Joni ducks under the clothesline, stiff sheets and airy dresses brushing against her skin, it catches her eye. She stills, hand still hanging in the air beside her head as she holds the laundry away from her. It’s a pair of cottony underwear. The high waisted kind so popular back in the seventies. It’s white, save right down the middle, where a pale pink stain blooms in the center. Blood. That homemade soap never got stains out quite like the chemicals. A thin breeze tousles Joni’s hair, the panties shiver under its touch.

She wakes reaching, hands searching desperately across the bed for Sebastian’s warmth. The sheets are as cold as the rest of the room, winter slipping through the cracks in the window. Joni sits up, sheets slipping off her bare legs, and rubs her eyes. “Fuck.” Her voice is voluminous in the room. A tremor runs through her and her heart stutters in her chest.

She’d told Dr. Rainier about these. These vague suspicions, coming only to her in dreams. But now, in the chilled light of near morning, Joni can remember his face. The man who raped her mother in the washroom. What a thing to think, what a thing to say out loud. A neighbor. _That’s it. _Everything is clicking together. He’d been a neighbor. Middle-aged. Divorced. Maybe a couple of grown kids, Joni can’t quite remember. He’d been so helpful. Always so helpful. Especially in the months after her mother died. Always hanging on the periphery, always just down the hall. He’d say that. _I’m just down the hall if you need anything. _Smile like a mousetrap. Joni remembers him coming over a few nights a week, remembers he and her dad sitting at their shabby table in the dining room playing cards into the early morning hours. _Hell. _

Joni gets up from the bed, a little steadier than she expects to be, and heads to the cramped little bathroom in her single. She splashes some cool water on her face, trying to place these new memories. How old was she? How long was it before her mother’s death? Weeks, she thinks, maybe a month. _Fuck. _Joni plops down on the toilet, the cold porcelain on her bare thighs makes her shiver. She waits for the panic to start. She keeps waiting.

She feels, strangely, almost okay. Bad, of course. Shaken up. A little sick to her stomach. She remembers that cavernous feeling before she took all those pills, all those flashes of memories washing so painfully over her. She knows that’s how her mother felt before the noose, knows now for sure. And it’s heinous And it’s horrible. And yet, it sits a little easier now. Those old, sharp feelings don’t reemerge, no sudden urge to hurtle toward destruction worms its way into her brain. This is, in so many ways, a confirmation of her greatest fears. A lineage of pain, of men chewing she and her mother up and spitting them out. But Joni just wants to sit with it. With that fear, that sadness. And the sadness is sharp, gruesome even, but even as grief fills her chest until it hurts, there’s something mellow about it all. Natural, even if it’s strange to think of it like that. Joni’s grief sits down beside her, puts its arms around her. She lets it linger, lets it fill her, and then she breathes it out and every muscle in her body releases.

Joni stands in front of the mirror, fussing with her hair, taking a good look at herself for the first time in, Yoba, so long. She’s always looked just like her mother. A spitting image so perfect, hardly a trace of her father anywhere on her. Her grandfather used to say she was made from strands of her mother’s hair, incubated in the flower buds out in front of the farmhouse. He always talked like that, like a man in a fairytale. _You’re in the soil, _he’d tell her. Yoba. She can see him so clearly when she closes her eyes. The fine lines of his face, smile so big and warm it could light up a room. They have the same eyes. She and him and her mother. Like they’d all come from the same seed.

Maybe it would be nice to go fishing, Joni thinks. When she gets out. When the weather warms up. It can’t be that hard to pick back up. Hell, it’s in her blood.

“How are things?” Joni pulls a little away from the receiver. She glances around the rec room. It’s mostly empty, the few people using it this late in the afternoon are all gathered around the tv in the corner. She’s a little more anxious than she’d been that morning in the bathroom, but only a little.

“They’re good,” she tells him, examining her nails. They’re starting to grow long again.

Sebastian pauses and she can almost see him tucking his bottom lip between his teeth, fingers itching for a cigarette. “They don’t have to be.”

Joni wraps the phone cord around her fingers. The hospital has an airy quality that is almost lush in the summer, but now that winter has the city in its grip, the tall ceilings and sparse rooms are chilly. “I mean, they are.”

“Can you not talk or something? I can call back at a better time.” Joni hears a phone ring across the line. Office sounds. It’s still so hard to imagine him in an office.

“No, it’s fine. It’s just awkward.”

“Awkward?”

Joni glances over at one of the hovering nurses. “There’s only a couple phones and they’re like right next to the nurses' station.”

“So you’re not okay?”

She frowns. “What?”

“Like is this for the benefit of the nurses? Saying you’re okay?”

“Oh, no, no. I really am. I really am okay.” She holds the phone tighter to her ear. “I really am doing a lot better. I mean, I know you might not believe me-“

“Why wouldn’t I believe you?” Joni balks and Sebastian quickly fills the silence. “I’m glad you’re feeling better. I’m so glad.”

“Thanks.” She slumps a little in her seat. Hearing his voice makes her feel hot all over, longing coursing through her. She’s still tired though, so tired, and the longing has nowhere to go.

Sebastian clears his throat, he sounds uncharacteristically nervous. It’s a little charming, really, to hear him like this, scrambling for words. “Leah wanted me to tell you hey. She’s working weird shifts the next two days and isn’t sure if she’ll be able to call during hours.” He coughs. “She’s been crazy with the cooking, though, holy Yoba. Has a bunch of new recipes she wants to make for you when you get back.” He keeps chattering on and Joni imagines him scratching nervously at his neck. She smiles, leaning her head against the wall, pulling her legs up onto the stool. “Goose is doing great, by the way. Misses you of course. The flowers too. Are doing great, I mean.. Or, I don’t know, they probably miss you too.” He chuckles. “We got them all moved inside. I’m keeping the, um, annuals?”

Joni laughs. “Yeah, those are a thing.”

“Right, I’m keeping the annuals by the radiator so you’ll have time to harvest the seeds. Read that one on the internet. I hope it-“

“I miss you.” It comes out so suddenly, just a rush of feeling, and Joni palms at her eyes, catching stray tears. She can imagine him scurrying around her apartment, Leah on his heels, and it makes her feels so warm, like her heart is going to burst out of her chest.

He exhales. “Yoba, I miss you too. More than you can even imagine.”

She twists the cord tighter around her fingers. “I think I can imagine.”

“You’ll be discharged in the morning.”

Joni jolts upright in her seat, whirling around to look behind her at Dr. Rainier. It’s jarring to see her outside her office, in the brightness of the rec room. “What?” She’d been watching another episode of the poor man’s Queen of Sauce, braiding and unbraiding her hair, trying not to let boredom get too far under her skin.

“I’ve drawn up the discharge papers and the staff will have them processed by early afternoon at the very latest. Is there someone you can call to pick you up? Your boyfriend?” Joni nods numbly, swallowing hard. “That’s great.” Dr. Rainier flips through her notepad. “I’m going to have the pharmacy refill your valium and we can start the weekly sessions we talked about next week. Will you call me once you get your work schedule? I’m in my downtown office Wednesday through Friday and I imagine that would probably be most convenient for you.”

“I’m sorry, wait, hold on. You’re letting me go?” Joni nods toward the nurses' station. “_They’re _letting me go?”

` Dr. Rainier frowns. “Do you not think you’re ready to be discharged?”

Joni wavers. She wants to leave, sure, and she feels suspiciously like she might even be alright, but a thorn of doubt has worked its way inside of her. “I’m…”

“Watch your alcohol consumption, make sure you’re eating three square meals a day, get enough sleep. Maybe dial it back on the weed.” Dr. Rainier has a wry grin, but Joni’s having trouble processing what she’s saying at all. “The rest we can work on in sessions. We have a lot to unpack, you know that. And we can start that work in our weekly meetings, but I don’t see any reason for you to continue to be hospitalized.”

“But I…checked myself in here, I…”

“And you were evaluated. And you were stabilized.”

“I was literally a disaster when I checked in here. I was literally…” Joni trails off. Her heart is pounding now.

“You don’t have to be okay all the time.” Dr. Rainier’s voice is different. Less official, a warmth Joni’s never heard before. It takes Joni a minute to realize that Dr. Rainier has a hand on her shoulder. The touch is, at first, startling. It’s been days since anyone but nurses have touched her, and she leans into the warmth. “We have setbacks. We get through them. You’re not the person I met a year ago, Joni. You’ve done a lot of growing. ” There it is again. That motherly feeling. Joni starts to cry. Dr. Rainier squeezes her shoulder. “You’ll be alright.” And it feels true. Honest to god true. Joni feels, suddenly, like she’s broken through a thicket of trees, her eyes straining from the light. It’s warm in the shadow of the sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading you guys <3


	26. Machinations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian hatches a plan.

“So.” Aaron looks at him over the lip of his coffee cup. “She’s in a…hospital?” Aaron loves this place around the corner from their work. Loves the little handwritten menus, loves all the young WASPs that take their lunches here. Them especially. He’s fucked more than a few. Points them out sometimes when he and Sebastian come here. As far as Sebastian can tell, Aaron’s primary type is douchebag. Married douchebag if the bands on more than a few of their ring fingers are anything to go by.

The restaurant is farm to table, Aaron loves to tell Sebastian that. Real fresh, real organic. Sebastian thinks that is very motherfucking unlikely as he watches Aaron dig into a plate of tomato ricotta toast. It’s the first week of December. Any tomato that wasn’t grown in a lab is long dead.

Sebastian takes a sip of his own coffee. “Yes, she’s in the hospital.”

“And that’s all you’re going to tell me, isn’t it?” Sebastian fixes him with a hard look that Aaron easily brushes off. A couple guys in suits have started to hassle the poor hostess up front. Something about reservations, something about privacy. _Unacceptable, _he hears over the quiet hum of silverware clinking on plates and classical music, _absolutely unacceptable_. The girl can’t be older than nineteen, looks like she’s about to throw up as these two guys really lay into her. _Assholes. _Sebastian suddenly hates that he can’t smoke in this joint. Aaron levels his knife at him. “Sebastian, we’re friends. Friend tell each other things.”

Sebastian rolls his eyes and takes a long sip of his coffee. He’d inhaled the croissant sandwich he’d ordered, but he’s still ravenous and does some quick mental math to try and figure out how close the nearest pizza joint is. Aaron clears his throat, not letting the conversation drop. “_You and I _are friends, Aaron.”

He feigns offense, gasping, hand on his chest. “You don’t think Joni wants to be my friend?”

Sebastian chuckles, leaning back in his chair. “You want to know more? Ask Joni.”

“And how hard will I be throttled if I try to ask her?”

“Hard.” Aaron has the brightest laugh. It always makes it sound like happiness comes so easy for him. Which is, after the morning they’ve had, a real feat. They only just escaped a grueling four-hour meeting with investors before this lunch. A meeting that Marianne spent winking at Sebastian and pointedly ignoring Aaron, talking over him anytime he opened his mouth. Whatever Aaron had done all those weeks back, he was clearly not forgiven.

So Sebastian can’t really blame him for huffing when he tries to slyly bring Marianne up, shutting the conversation down before it can even get off the ground. Sebastian’s happy to let it go. He doesn’t particularly want to talk about Marianne either, even if he is painfully curious to hear Aaron’s take on her. At least things have stabilized a little on that front. Sebastian told her a couple weeks ago that the phone lines in his apartment building were on the fritz. So the phone calls had stopped, replaced by long emails. Blocks of text, riddled with typos, so different from the curt, professional emails she sends him during the day. But at least the emails are easier to contain, easier to hide from Joni. Guilt twists in his chest. He knows he doesn’t need to be hiding them, just can’t quite figure out how he’s going to tell her about all this. Or even _if _he is. Some days all of it really feels like nothing. Like maybe he’s just being sensitive, maybe reading too much into it. Other days, there’s really no denying how bad it’s gotten, how much it’s grating at his nerves. Either way, Joni really _really _doesn’t need more shit on her plate. Not right now anyway.

Aaron snaps his fingers and Sebastian jolts back to the restaurant. The suited men have moved on to their table, the hostess staring off into the middle distance at her station in the front of the restaurant. “Fucking shit man where did you go off to?”

Sebastian kneads the base of his neck. “Sorry, sorry. Just, _fuck, _long day you know?” Aaron rolls his eyes, but Sebastian can see the strain in his face too. “I’m sorry. For real. What were you saying?”

“I was _asking _if you’d been following the news.”

“Which news?”

“Tech news.”

Sebastian scoffs. “Yeah, no fucking thank you. I like to have, you know, a _life _outside work.”

“I’ll ignore that not so subtle jab.”

Sebastian smirks, draining his coffee. “So what’s the news?”

“People are starting businesses.”

Sebastian narrows his eyes. “Yeah…that’s…what people tend to do.”

Aaron shakes his head. “No, no. Like people like us. Young people.”

“Young, rich people. Right, that’s generally-“

Aaron sighs. “No! People like _us _us. I’ve been seeing it all over the place. New gaming companies, new tech companies. They’re getting seed capital. It’s like the wild west out there and the old guard is like panicking right? It’s a whole new world.”

Sebastian smiles at the waitress as she refills his coffee. “Why are you telling me this?”

Aaron shrugs. “It’s just something I’ve been thinking about.” He looks almost sheepish, uncharacteristically so. “Just been wondering if you’ve been thinking about it too.” Sebastian watches him closely, taking a few more sips of coffee. The silence that falls between them is thick and Aaron immediately buckles under it, sucking in a deep breath and straightening up. “Well, anyway, we should probably get back to work.” He pulls a few twenties out of his wallet and lays them hard on the table.

The sidewalks are coated in a thick layer of slush that breaks under their shoes, chilly water rising up, wetting their socks. Sebastian lights a cigarette and frowns. Aaron wraps his cashmere scarf tighter around his neck. He’s stopped pretending that he likes to smoke and instead tugs the lid off his coffee cup and downs the rest of it.

It’s been almost a week of perpetual twilight, sky a dull grey. The winters in the Valley are colder, but at least the sun comes out. This heavy darkness is almost unbearable.

The two of them are taking the long way back to work. They’ve been doing that a lot more lately, walking quietly together, stretching their lunch hours out, pushing back the office for as long as they can. They wind their way around the district, passing cafes and jewelry stores, expensive restaurants. A chilly wind kicks up and Sebastian pauses to try and light his next cigarette. He huddles up against the windows of a storefront, hands tented, lighter clicking uselessly under his thumb. He groans, frustrated, and glances up. It’s then, looking past his own reflection in the glass, that he sees it. That telltale red cover. A whole display case of them. His heart jumps into his throat. “Are you coming or what?” Aaron shouts from the street corner.

“Hold on!” Sebastian glances back at him, then again at the book. “Give me just a second.”

Frowning, Aaron backtracks. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing yet.” Sebastian pushes the door open, a rush of hot air greets him.

The bookstore is nothing like the one Joni works in. Big, open space. Sleek, modern lines. It has an almost corporate feeling. The front two shelves are rows and rows of CDs, a wall of VHS to one side. The kid behind the register looks to be about seventeen. Grungy as hell, the shoddy piercing in his lips looking a little infected. He’s staring off into nothing, clearly bored out of his mind. When Sebastian slams Elliot’s book down on the counter, the kid just about jumps out of his damn skin. “Do you know anything about the author of this?”

The kid looks at him cockeyed and sniffles. “Um, I don’t know, man.” Sebastian doesn’t waver The kid sniffles again, then nods toward the back of the store. “Like let me get my boss.”

“He’s a local author,” the bespectacled old man tells Sebastian, narrowing his eyes at the cover. “Just got this one in. If I’m not mistaken, this is his debut.”

“It is.” Sebastian says, glancing quickly back at the door. Aaron’s pacing outside the shop. He waves angrily at Sebastian.

The old man raises an eyebrow. “Well, I haven’t read it, so I'm not sure I can recommend it. Is that what you wanted to see me about?”

“No, uh, actually I’m a big fan. Loved the book.” Sebastian tucks his hands into his pockets, rolling his shoulders back. “Do you, uh, host a lot of readings at this store?”

The old man frowns, suspicious. “Some.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes, any bookstore worth its salt in this city does. Listen, young man if you could-“

Sebastian holds up his hand, digging in his messenger bag for a scrap of paper and a pen. He scrawls his name and number down and slides the paper across the counter toward the owner. “Like I said, I’m a huge fan of this author. I would _really _appreciate it if you could give me a call if you hear about him doing a reading.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading guys <3


	27. Sunshine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joni gets out.

It’s a little like a movie. The way he’s leaning against the car, wind softly tousling his dark hair, cigarette burning low between his fingers. Sebastian looks, standing there in the distance, like he has the whole world untangled, like he can hold it all in his hands. She smiles. Yoba, it’s so good, _so good, _to see him. She feels starved for touch, sterile and cold like her nerves need to be woken back up. He knows every inch of her. He can breathe her back to life. 

Sebastian scuffs the toes of his sneaker on the asphalt, scrapes his hair back. The silhouette of his aquiline nose, his adam’s apple. A long, familiar line. Smoke billows out of his mouth before he takes another long drag. It’s like a Western, the way the setting sun frames him in livid orange. That’s what she’d thought the very first night she saw him too, bent over the pool table, cigarette hanging from his lip. A Greek John Wayne. Rough around the edges. Tattooed enough to be scary, eyes so soft that she’s never once been afraid of him. All tightly coiled muscle and the faintest country boy swagger. And then that surprise when he opens his mouth. That quiet, assured intellect. His nervous laughter when he thinks he’s been talking too much. Joni remembers the ease with which he hefted open his garage door the night of his Spirit’s Eve party, how nimbly he’d fixed her bike, the grease staining his fingers black. She’d watched those hands so intently. Wide palms, long fingers. She’d dreamed of them on her skin, inside her. And then they were there, holding her, catching her. He’s here again. Here to catch her. Yoba, she’s so hopelessly in love. It washes over her like a tide, flickers like a warm hearth in her chest. It’s the easiest feeling in the world and for the first time, she doesn’t fight it, lets herself slip into it. Her smile feels warm on her face.

Sebastian hasn’t seen her yet. Joni stands like a shadow at the base of the steps, toeing the asphalt. He’s looking out toward the city, at the sun as it dips into the cold harbor. Nearly night now. The chill in the air has settled into the earth and the sidewalk is frigid through the thin soles of her sneakers. It’s become winter overnight. All the little bits of fall she remembered seeing before the hospital now gone. No snow yet, but the air is still and expectant, like it could start to fall any minute.

It had taken longer for the discharge to go through than they all thought and by the time she was ready mid-afternoon, Sebastian was walking into a meeting. He’d sound so wracked with guilt over the phone that Joni lied and told him the hospital wasn’t going to let her go until six. Those hours crept by so slowly, Joni getting more and more nervous as the minutes ticked by. But now, standing out in the cold, her nerves bleed out of her.

The last time she’d left this hospital, she’d called a cab, shivered the whole way back to her shitty apartment. Her roommate looked at her like she was some kind of wild animal, waiting nervously in the kitchen while she packed up her things. She’d slept on a bare mattress that night, pulled the damn thing out onto the curb before the sun rose, and got on that rickety bus to Pelican Town when the first rays of light were still barely peeking over the low building on the outskirts of Zuzu.

Funny, that. The way things change even when they stay the same. The hospital is the same. She feels the same vague numbness as she did that morning, the same sense of expectation. But the expectation isn’t tinged with dread this time. Not in the same way. And here she is. Boyfriend here waiting for her in the parking lot, leaning up against her best friend’s car. Joni glances around the parking lot. She doesn’t see Leah anywhere, smiles when she tries to imagine how that conversation went, Sebastian asking to come on his own. Maybe he just needed some space to think. He _does _look lost in thought, jaw working, brow furrowed. Her boy is thinking _hard _about something and, for a moment, all she wants to do is just look at him. Commit him to memory. The icy breeze catches her hair, slipping easily through her thin clothes. She wraps her arms around herself and the sound of the fastenings on her bag clinking against the zipper of her coat draws his attention. He straightens, his cigarette falling still lit onto the ice. “Yoba!” He scrapes his hair back with his fingers. “Yoba, I’m sorry. How long have you been waiting there?” He starts to close the distance between them, quickly checking his watch. “I thought I had more time before they…shit, I’m so sorry. I hope you haven’t been waiting long.” Joni beams at him and his face softens. “You look beautiful,” he tells her on a sigh, stopping just short of touching her.

Joni laughs out loud. “Oh sure, sure I do.”

He chuckles. “No, really.” He runs the backs of his fingers across her cheek. “You’ve got sunshine in your hair.”

A beat and then she’s on him, pulling him tightly against her, face pressed into the crook of his neck. She breathes in the scent of him. Soap and cigarettes and musk. Home. She can feel his hot breath in her hair, listens to him breathe her in too. He snakes a hand down, splaying it across her back, the other securely at the nape of her neck. “How ya feeling sweet thing?” He must be tired, or nervous, because his accent is thick. Joni feels that lonely pang of homesickness again when she hears it. It’s fleeting. He’s so warm around her.

“Better.” She pulls away, hands still fisted in his coat. “Better.” She nods, mostly to herself, then looks up to meet his eyes. “We have a lot to talk about.”

“Not to steal your thunder,” he says, digging into a thick piece of blueberry pie. A la mode like always, ice cream running off the hot crust onto the plate. He swipes some of it up with his thumb, smiling at the taste, “but I might have some idea about what you’re going to tell me.”

Joni swallows hard. She isn’t surprised, per se. The weeks have bled together, one long, foggy line where she’d said and done things that seem far away and impossible now, but it still jolts her. The idea that maybe all of this is out in the open, _really _out in the open, makes her temples ache. “Elliot?” She says, trying to suss out what he knows.

Sebastian pauses, frowning, before going in for another bite of pie. “And Josh.”

The air is freezing in her lungs and she brings her hand to her collarbone, nails against skin. “Well then.” She reaches over to take the fork from him. He releases it, watching curiously as she takes a bite of pie.

The flavor’s a shock. So sticky sweet. The sugared crust cracking against her teeth. The food at the hospital is as austere as the décor, like it’s designed not to provoke a reaction good or bad. And now, in this warm booth, she feels as raw and exposed as she had the first time they discharged her. Nerves alight. Every flavor, every touch like it’s the very first one. “Good?” Joni nods and his eyes go soft, head cocking slightly as he watches her. The waitress breezes past them.

They picked a place outside of town. A greasy spoon across the highway from a rest stop that looks like it stopped selling gas way back during the shortages in the seventies. Just far enough from the main turnpike that they’re probably not gonna run into anyone they know, but close enough to the city that it’s buzzing with people. A few tourists, people coming in from the road, a couple groups of huddled teenagers. The energy is good. Neutral.

A freezing rain started as they drove over, drops heavy and loud on the windshield, but inside the restaurant it’s dry and warm and the only sounds are the gurgling pop of the fryer, the swish of the waitress’s apron as she sways down the narrow aisle, the steady hum of talking all around them. Joni ordered a vanilla malt, likes the sort of gritty tang of it. Likes the way malts always taste just a little off.

Sebastian reaches for the plate of fries between them, pops one into his mouth, watching as she dips hers in the thick shake one by one. He’s letting the silence stretch good and long. It’s a specialty of his and Joni wonders where the hell he learned that kind of stoic patience, which part of his complicated childhood honed that particular skill. Joni sighs, finally meeting his eyes. “How long have you known?”

“How long were you planning on keeping it a secret?”

She bristles. “_That _is not an answer.”

He sighs, looking out onto the parking lot beyond the window. The day is incredibly grey, even as the rain starts to let up. “Day you went to the hospital. Found the book in your room. Leah told me about Josh.”

Joni swears. _Traitor._ “Did you read the book?”

He turns back to face her, leveling his fork at her. “Hey, I answered your question, now you answer mine.”

Joni huffs, sitting back in the booth. The plasticky upholstery squeaks under her shifting weight. “I was working on it, okay? I was working it out.” Sebastian shakes his head, running his fingers through his hair, suddenly agitated. “I was going to tell you!” Her voice gets a little high pitched when she’s on the defensive, almost whiney. She hates the way it sounds. “I really was going to tell you once things had settled down.”

Sebastian shakes his head again, eyes at the ceiling, arms crossed over his chest. His long legs stretched all the way over to her side of the booth. “I could have helped you. _Leah _could have helped you. All of us. You didn’t have to do this alone.”

Joni is suddenly brutally tired. Cold and raw. She wants to slip under her covers, wants to sleep all night long. “I know…”

Sebastian goes silent again. For a long time. The restaurant shifting around them. Finally, Joni can’t take it anymore, makes to really lay into him for letting this sit between them, but when she glances up at him there’s nothing of the cool, collected expression she knows so well. He’s clearly straining to contain his emotions, hands fisted on the table, jaw clenched so tightly the tendons in his neck pop.

He wipes angrily at one eye and exhales loudly. “I can’t help but think this is my fault.”

Joni freezes, mouth open. She frowns at him, eyebrows knitting together. “What the _fuck _are you even talking about? Where the hell did you even come up with that?” Sebastian chuckles weakly. “Sebastian!”

“I know, I know.” He shakes his head, frowning, his half-eaten pie all but forgotten. “I was just so in my own shit.” His frown deepens, eyes boring into a spot on their table. “So in my own shit. I didn’t see what was going on.”

“What are you talking about?”

He sniffles. “All of it. Leaving you when you were still reeling from Elliot. Moving out here.” His nostrils flare, eyes still singularly focused on the table. “You deserved better than that.”

“I’m a big girl, Sebastian.”

“Yeah, I know.” Finally, _finally_, he looks at her. His eyes are molten. “But you shouldn’t have had to do this shit alone.”

“I didn’t.” Sebastian grimaces. “Hey.” Joni sits up in her seat, leaning over the booth to take his face in her hands. “_Hey. _I didn’t. And I’m not going to now okay? I’m gonna be okay.” She squeezes. “I’m going to be okay. Both of us are gonna be okay.”

She can feel his jaw unclench under her palms. He drags her hand across his cheek, lips pressing softly against her palm. “Yeah.” His eyes softly close and for a moment it seems like he’s just breathing her in. He opens one eye then smiles. “You have uh…” he runs a finger across his lower lip. Joni cocks her head, confused. “Here.” He brushes his thumb against her mouth, wiping some stray whipped cream from her lip. Sebastian sucks the sugar from his finger then, after a moment of consideration, leans over again and pulls Joni into a kiss. His mouth is hot, pulse thumping wildly under her touch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading guys!


	28. Splash*

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is actually just dirty, sloppy smut. Been a minute since I porned up this story.

They’re watching a movie. The sun has just slipped into the harbor, that pale neon glow of downtown darkness settling over them on the couch. It’s a Lynch piece she thinks. Or maybe? No definitely a Lynch piece. The movie is saturated blue and dark, the dialogue dramatic and a little clumsy. The way the camera lingers over a dark-haired woman as she sings, her lips brushing against the microphone. Sebastian’s engrossed, but Joni can’t really focus. She’s fixating instead on the places where Sebastian’s touching her. And on the places he’s not. Because those are the places she’d rather he be. She glances over at him, runs her thumb down the back of his neck. He squeezes her shoulder. She’s sullen.

She wants to get fucked. Wants to get fucked _hard. _Wants him to move her body around, to play with it, to wear it out. And she expected to be fucking by now. Sort of figured they’d fuck in the backseat of Leah’s car in the hospital parking lot. But they didn’t. And despite their heated kiss at the restaurant, Sebastian’s been uncharacteristically skittish. They’d headed to Sebastian’s place after the diner. Leah was working late and it was closer anyway. And, sure, she’d been pretty goddamn beat by the time they dropped their stuff on the floor of his front room, but when they’d woken up tangled in each other’s arms, Sebastian slipped from her grasp, heading quickly to the shower before she could even kiss him. The more she thinks about it, stiff beside him as the movie plays, the more her nerves start to chafe at her and soon she can’t stand it. She rolls over onto his lap, taking his head in her hands. He startles, but his hands, maybe on instinct, find their way to her sides. “Why aren’t we fucking?”

Sebastian quirks an eyebrow up, clearing stifling a smirk. “What? Like right now?”

Joni squirms in his lap. “Yeah, like right now. Or last night? Or, I don’t know, this morning?”

Sebastian's face goes stoic. She can see the gears turning in his head now that he can tell she’s not teasing him, not really. “Are you being serious right now?”

“Uh, _yeah_.”

Sebastian sighs, his thumbs rubbing soft circles on her sides. “Joni, it’s been barely a day since you got out.”

Joni bristles, “and what? Do you think my pussy broke while I was in there or something?”

Sebastian tries and fails to stifle a laugh, throwing his head back to grin. When he sits back up, he shakes his head, running the pad of his thumb across her lips. “Yoba, I missed you.”

She squirms away from his touch. “Stop, I’m being serious. Why aren’t you fucking me? Why didn’t you fuck me last night?”

“We were both tired last night, Joni. You looked like you needed sleep so bad, I just…”

Joni sits back, removing her hands from him. Her heart is pounding again, right up to her ears. “I don’t want this to be how it’s going to be.”

He frowns. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t want you to treat me like this just because I’m like some kind of basket case now.”

“You’re not a basket case.” He rolls his neck. The pops make Joni flinch. “And if you recall, I was well aware that you’d been in a hospital before. This isn’t news to me.”

“Yeah, but it’s different this time.” She’s rapidly losing her confidence, would try and retreat from his lap if his hold wasn’t so tight on her. “You actually saw it this time.”

“It doesn’t make a difference to me.”

“So why are you acting different?”

He sighs, sliding her closer to him, their hips bumping. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to.”

“I’m not like gonna break, you know.” 

He brushes his fingers down her cheek, eyes glittering in the half-light. “I know that, but you looked so goddamn exhausted when I picked you up last night.”

“You said I looked beautiful.”

He presses a kiss to the side of her mouth. “You did. You always look beautiful. But you’ve had a hell of a few days. Shit, had a hell of a week.”

Joni shifts in his lap, her anxiety rapidly retreating. “So that’s it then?”

“Yes, that’s it.” He shakes his head, smiling. “Didn’t really think it would be appropriate to roll over and mount you when you got out of the shower last night. I figured we could, you know, take it easy.”

Joni snorts and the sound lights Sebastian up. She splays her fingers on his chest, eyes following the line of his throat from its hollow to his jaw. She runs her finger along it. His skin is uncharacteristically rough, a days worth of stubble. “Well, I want you to fuck me now.”

He smirks, hands sliding down from her waist to cup her ass. “Yes, ma’am. I think I can do that for ya.” Joni swats at him, laughing. He leverages his strength, flipping her onto her back, hair splayed out around her head.

Her hips churn against his mouth, ass rolling over the wet tile as she tries to match the pace of his tongue. The water sloshes around his chest, the sound echoing in the empty room. His fingers tight on her hips. Joni’s moans echo in the atrium, the glittering light from the city all around them filtering in, bathing the tropical ferns and wicker furniture in a strange glow. This had been her idea, the pool room. She likes all the glass, all the water, likes the way the light streams over her bare skin. She feels beautiful like this, Sebastian between her legs, his hands sliding up her stomach, tracing patterns of water along her skin. She flinches when he pulls her clit between his lips and sucks, shuddering until he softens the pressure. She’s already cum twice, Sebastian’s cock hard and throbbing, distorted by the ripples in the water. She hasn’t touched it once and now that Sebastian has gotten into his head that he wants to try and make her squirt with just her clit, she’s not sure she’s gonna have to stamina to. He runs his teeth across her clit, just the barest pressure, but she’s oversensitive, almost to the point of shouting. She fists her hands in his hair and tugs him gently off her. “You’re gonna kill me.” She lets her head roll back when he relents, her hair damp falling across her shoulders, “you are actually gonna kill me.”

Sebastian pulls away, treading water, face slick and looking wildly pleased with himself. He drags his thumb down the lips of her pussy, careful to avoid the throbbing bud of her clit. “Can’t have that.”

She thrusts her hips softly toward him and he laughs. That warm, easy sound. “I thought you said I was gonna kill you.” Joni doesn’t respond, just cants her hips toward him again. He doesn’t hesitate, hauling himself out of the pool, lifting her into his arms. They land hard on one of the wicker lounges. He nips at her neck, hand pumping his cock. She digs her nails into his shoulders and on the first thrust, she releases, muscles unclenching. She moans something that might be an _oh god _or a _don’t stop _and the sound spurs him on. He thrusts hard, the lounge chair groaning under their combined weight. He pulls her bottom lip down, Joni laps at his fingers. He’s thrusting so hard, Joni moaning so loud that they barely hear it. Just the faintest sound of keys jangling. Joni hears it first, sitting upright so quickly that Sebastian about shouts, slipping roughly out of her. “Joni, what the-“

She clamps her hand over his mouth. “Shhh.” They wait, eyes locked, listening. The keys jangle again and they hear the distinct sound of someone wrestling with the door. They just stare at each other for a beat and then they’re a flurry of movement. They break apart, searching frantically for towels. Sebastian tosses Joni one and she quickly wraps it around her naked body. They make a break for the door, Sebastian sliding on the tiles, Joni pulling him back upright. She starts to laugh and then Sebastian does and soon they’re slipping and sliding along the tiles, their palms hitting hard on the opposite wall. Sebastian takes Joni’s hand and the two of them barrel through the door, slipping past a flustered old woman in a bathing suit and sprinting out into the hall. “Oh my god!” Joni’s voice is a screech as they run. “Oh my fucking god!”

“I told you!” Sebastian trails behind her, towel clutched to cover his cock, laughing so hard he’s panting. “I said that as soon as we even tried to fuck someone would come up!”

“Nobody even uses that pool!” Joni slows to a stop, huffing, hands on her knees. “Literally you said you’ve never seen another person use that pool.”

Sebastian stops beside her, panting with his forehead against the wall. “Murphy’s law, Jo. We were asking for it.”

Joni leans up against the wall, trying to catch her breath. She rests the back of her hand on her forehead, grinning from ear to ear. “Yoba, I think I’m gonna pass out.” When she glances over, she finds Sebastian looking hard at her, his eyes dark.

Without another word, he crashes into her, hiking her legs roughly up over his hips, kissing her hard and fast. He nips at her jaw, her throat, her collarbone. “I’m not done fucking you.”

The couch creaks as he thrusts, the city’s blue light falling in strips through his blinds over Joni’s bare chest. Her hands lay limply beside her head, whole body singularly focused on the pressure between her legs. She moans, eyes fluttering closed. The pleasure is so intense and yet all she wants is more. She wants him to fuck her raw, fuck her until she’s unsteady as a fawn on her legs. Sebastian lifts her hips to change the angle, cock brushing up against that spot inside of her that only he’s managed to find, and Joni digs her heels into his shoulders, thighs shuddering against his chest. She looks up at him. At that dark mess of hair, sticking to his sweat-slicked forehead, jaw tight, the hard muscles of his arms bulging as he holds her hips up off the couch. “My ass.” She says, half broken, on a ragged breath.

Sebastian slows his hips. “What about it?” His voice teasing.

Joni groans in frustration, reaching for him, nails out like a feral cat. He dodges her, nipping playfully at her ankle. “I want you to fill me up.”

“Insatiable.” His voice is even, controlled, but Joni feels the way his hips stutter, the way his fingers dig into her hips. Joni swats at him, laughing. He thumbs lazily at her clit. “Let me flip you over.” Joni whines when he pulls out, her hips bearing down at the loss of sensation. He smirks down at her, kissing the tip of her nose. “Insatiable.” It comes out like a growl and Joni fumbles for him, desperate for touch. He takes her hand, kissing across her knuckles. “I got ya.”

Joni lets him take the lead, lets him position her. She can barely keep herself upright, her thighs slick from arousal. He kisses her tailbone, slipping easily back inside of her. Joni flexes her fingers. His thumb rubs circles on the tight bud of her ass, rubbing and rubbing before he leans down and spits. The sound makes her clench around him and he groans. “Shit, Joni.” His spit feels cold on her hot skin and the sensation makes her shiver. “We need lube.” Sebastian slows his thrusts again, she can feel him about to pull out.

Joni groans, rocking back toward him. “We’ll be fine.”

He chuckles, but leans down to cage his body over hers, rolling his fingers over her lips. “Open up.” She does, laving her tongue over each knuckle. “Gonna need more than that.” His thrusts are agonizingly slow, a long drag. Joni takes his fingers deep into her throat, gagging, and his hips stutter when she swallows around them. “God, your fucking mouth.” He pulls a string of saliva out with his fingers and kisses down each notch in her spine. “Relax.” His voice is low, the kind of husky he reserves only for her. Joni takes a deep breath and lets herself melt into the couch, resting her head on her arms. “Shit, so good.” One finger, then two. Gentle and yet so _thick _inside her ass. He starts to thrust again and soon Joni can’t help the increasingly animal sounds coming out of her mouth. Sebastian reaches around to rub her clit and she bucks. “God, you’re so hot. The hottest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” She’s so tight around his cock and feels so goddamn full as his fingers work her ass in time with his thrusts. “You are fucking sublime.”

And that does it. The sound of his voice, the raw honesty she can hear in it. Her orgasm wrecks her, shouting his name. Her whole body trembles as she comes down and she reaches behind her for him. He leans down to kiss her palm. “You always cum so pretty.” She moans in response, boneless from his touch.

He pulls his fingers from her ass and gently, so gently, flips her onto her back. He slips his arms under her, holding her closely to him, thrusting deep and slow. He whispers love into the shell of her ear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys SO much for reading. I love you all and your comments and kudos keep me inspired to write <3


	29. Static*

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things settle back into a normal routine. Or do they?

He starts at her ankle. Kisses the ball of it. He’s holding her leg up, heel resting on his shoulder. Her skin tastes like salt.

She’s watching him, expectant, her nipples poking out just above the water line in the tub. Her hair’s half wet, spun gold where the water’s touched it, her eyes lidded. It’s the first day in so long that the sun has come out to see them and as its beams filter through the bathroom window it falls like a spotlight over her, her skin glittering where the water has touched it. Sebastian shifts in the tub, sending water spilling over the side onto the tile. He’s too tall for it, knees higher than the sides of it, but Joni fits easily between his legs, the foot he doesn’t have ahold of slotting easily over his hip.

Joni has the pinkest, sweetest looking nipples and the thought feels weirdly scummy, like he’s taking her apart piece by piece, so he kisses her ankle again, massages the arch of her foot. She sighs, closing her eyes, and he works his thumbs up toward her toes.

This tub’s just like the one in the farmhouse and if it weren’t for the sounds of traffic from the street below, he could almost pretend they’re back there. He closes his eyes too and imagines padding down the hall, nautical paintings and those mysterious mounted fish watching him as he goes, and putting on a pot of coffee. Something dark, robust. Something to warm Joni up from the inside. To warm himself from the inside. They could bundle up and head out on the porch, steam billowing from their mugs as the sharp chill in the air settles around them. The air is different out there.

He opens his eyes to find Joni still leaning back, mouth slightly open like it sometimes it when she’s about to have one of those soft orgasms that sends her mewling, eyes fluttering. Her hair curls wet around her shoulders. Sebastian figures he can still do what he’d imagined. Make them some nice coffee. Maybe they could go out on the roof and watch the boats out in the harbor. They might be able to see some, at least. A pot bangs from the kitchen and Joni tenses under his hands, opening one eye to glance at the bathroom door. He presses his thumb into the ball of her foot. “Did you get this apartment just because of the tub?”

Joni smirks, sinking down into the water until everything below her chin is submerged, her hair long tendrils on the surface of the tub. “And if I did?”

Sebastian kisses down her leg, smiling against the soft skin of her shin. “It would be on brand.” She flicks her foot at him, splashing water onto his face. He grins, all teeth and mischief, and yanks her down the length of the tub by her ankles. Joni shouts, kicking at him, until he pulls her upright, their hips bumping. She splashes him again, trying to stifle her grin. Sebastian leans a little back, trying to take all of her in. She looks like a mermaid. He hates when he thinks shit like that, but he can’t help it, not today. She’s the spitting image. Damp curls stuck to her breasts, lips full and raw from how often she’s been running her teeth over them. A nervous tic, but less worrying than the way she scratches at her collarbone. She’s been doing that less lately. Her hands wander curiously up his chest like she’s never touched something like him before and he remembers the night of Spirit’s Eve when she’d slipped naked into the pool, looking truly like something from out of this world. He kisses her and she blinks at him like she’s waking up from a dream and then he sees it, what he’d been looking for since he picked her up from the hospital. That brief flicker he’d first recognized, Yoba, years ago now out in front of Pierre’s shop. Just the barest glimpse of that churning darkness before she slams that window shut. He wants to say something, but he has no idea where to even begin, and then she’s kissing him back, arms slung around his neck and the sunshine is so golden and so warm on his skin and she is so soft and her body is so close. Sebastian slips his hand between her legs. Joni sighs against him, resting her head on his shoulder. He shifts his hips so they’re more upright, the water sloshing around them and then slips two of his fingers inside of her. She flexes her palms against his shoulders, splaying one hand out and running it softly down his chest. She starts to rock her hips, grinding down on his palm. “I love you,” he whispers and there must be something in the tone of his voice because Joni stops moving, peering up at him, eyebrows knitted. He feels, suddenly, enormously self-conscious, his voice stuttery. “I just…I want you to know that. That I love you, more than I’ve ever loved another person. I want you to know that I would do anything for you.” She cocks her head at him and her eyes open again, really open. That torrent of darkness roiling over their pale, clear color. But it’s different this time, something he can’t quite put his finger on. He pulls out of her, brushing his hands across her thighs. The moment is over, but it doesn’t feel like a loss.

Her fingers walk their way up his stomach, tracing quick patterns over his chest, his shoulders. She’s backlit by the afternoon sun now, the rest of the room so bright it vanishes. She’s the only thing he can see and he holds her hips tightly, like he might float away if he doesn’t keep himself moored there to her. “I know.” Her voice is barely above a whisper. She traces her thumb along his jaw. “I love you too.”

He’s barefoot when he wanders out into the kitchen, hair still damp from the bath. Leah nods at him then gets immediately back to her work which appears to be, as far as he can tell, peeling the most enormous butternut squash he’s ever seen with a paring knife barely longer than her pointer finger. She’s nimble though. Sebastian watches her, wondering which of his fingers he’d end up lopping off if he tried to do what she’s doing. He’s always thought she was a talented sculptor, but it’s wild to see her work, even if it’s just on a gourd. “Mind if I put a pot of coffee on?” He asks, digging in the cabinets for the beans he brought over a few weeks before.

“Course not.” She glances over her shoulder at him as he fills the pot with water from the sink. “You staying for dinner?”

“Planning on it, yeah. Was gonna order from that Mexican place two blocks down. Want me to get you something?”

“Don’t bother. I’m making curry.”

Sebastian smiles softly to himself. It’s easy to let Leah run shit because she’s so goddamn good at it. And maybe because he still feels, a little, like he’s on thin ice. With her, with Joni, hell, with himself. “Sure, sounds good.”

He’s just managed to get the coffee maker gurgling when Leah clears her throat. He waits, turning to face Leah’s back at the stove. “How is she?” She asks, without turning around.

Sebastian frowns. It’s the question he’s been asking himself for two days straight. _Hard to tell, _he wants to say even though he knows that would be the exact wrong thing to tell Leah. But it is hard to tell. They haven’t talked about the hospital, not really, or what happened before it. Their conversation about Elliot and Josh pretty much ended at her tacit admission that, yes, everything he thought was true was indeed true. And now Sebastian’s again wracked with the kind of indecision and guilt that’s been keeping him up at night. He doesn’t want to pry, but can’t help thinking that maybe if he pried harder before they might be in an entirely different position now. S he’s been leaving the floor open, listening intently when she offhandedly brings something up, hoping that his restraint isn’t coming off as disinterest. But she _does _seem fine. Maybe too fine. He chastises himself for the thought. That shit isn’t fair. Just because she isn’t crying on his lap doesn’t mean she isn’t working it out. Besides, hadn’t she mentioned that she’s starting therapy next week? Leah clears her throat again and when Sebastian blinks himself out of his thoughts, she’s facing him, hands on her hips, wooden spoon almost threateningly at her side. “Good.” He says, a little too enthusiastically. He clears his throat now too and tries to even out his voice. “She’s good.”

Leah huffs. “None of this secret couple bullshit. I’m not interested in it. How is she _actually_?”

Sebastian scoffs. “Secret couple bullshit? You know as well as I do that anything she tells me she’s already told you.” Leah rolls her eyes, but she can’t hide her slight smile. “I think she’s fine. I think she would tell one of us if she wasn’t.”

His answer seems to satisfy her and she tosses him an onion that he barely catches. “Chop this. Make yourself useful.”

Sebastian shakes his head, grinning, but Leah’s already turned back to the big stock pot she has waiting on the stove. He rummages around in the cutlery drawer for a knife then gets to work, slicing off the ends. It’s peaceful in the kitchen. Something about the thick walls and narrow window dulls the sounds of the city. Leah has a little cinnamon broom hanging beside the fridge. Anytime the walls groan as a big truck passes below or a stiff wind picks up, its sharp, earthy scent fills the room, fighting for air time with the slightly pale smell of the raw squash. Leah’s got the radio on. From the occasional bouts of static, Sebastian can tell she’s picking up a program way out of the city limits and as he gets into the routine of preparing the onions, he starts to listen. The host sounds a little out there. Middle-aged probably, like he spends a lot of time on forums with big blinking text and custom cursors. Has a slightly hysterical lilt to his voice that he manages to keep toned down only through virtue of the long, complicated scientific terms he’s (probably mis-) using. It takes Sebastian a minute to realize that this dude is talking about aliens. UFO sightings actually, just over the southern coast and then, as the man starts talking about a craft that zoomed over Interstate 5 (captured on film, of course, by a farmer who pulled his tractor onto the side of the road to fish out a point and shoot from the late sixties. _That’s why the footage is so grainy, _the host assures his audience) Sebastian realizes he’s talking about a densely forested spot a few towns over from Pelican Town. Sebastian doesn’t care all that much about aliens, or at least hasn’t since he was a teenager, but the sudden mental image of a spaceship rocketing over his hometown has him thinking about how clean the sky looks when autumn starts to fade into winter. How the sky is a soft, heather streak of grey that makes the fall color all the more brilliant and caps the Valley off so it feels like a snow globe, cushioned from the rest of the country. How the tops of the tall pines shiver in the wind. How his mother can identify the kind of wood that’s burning in a hearth just from the way it smells.

Sebastian licks his lips, carefully peeling the skin from his second onion. Demetrius taught him how to do this. _The most efficient way to peel an onion. _Sebastian almost laughs. Leave it to his stepdad to take something as artful as cooking and break it down into little, clinical pieces. Funny that man, so damn dull most the time and yet, the tart he’d make with all those onions always tasted like a little slice of divinity. Like real passion. When he got old enough to see it, the look his mother would give Demetrius after a meal made him wonder if this intricate show of cooking was a kind of foreplay. At the very least, it made that ragtag gang around their old dinner table feel something like a real family. Sebastian can almost hear him now. _Cooking is science’s gift to art. _How many times had he said that? Yoba, probably every time that geezer bent over the stove. Fuck, Sebastian really ought to call him. His mother too. Definitely Maru. She’d written him a long letter almost a month ago, going on about how stifled she felt at work, how much she was looking forward to starting up at college in the spring. She’d had to defer to fall semester for reasons she didn’t get into in the letter and never mentioned the few times they talked on the phone. She wrote too about Evelyn’s wildly prolific strawberry patch that summer, how the whole town had eaten itself sick on her strawberry cream cake for months. He’d laughed out loud at her hastily scrawled postscript. _Oh and by the way, hope Joni’s good. No more mixing xannies and booze right? _Sebastian smiles to himself and starts peeling the cloves of garlic Leah tossed his way during the last commercial break. The host tells them that they’ve got a man calling himself H. Jenkins on the line. That he’s going to tell them about the craft that landed deep in the woods where he was hunting and took him aboard. Sebastian wonders if it’s the same forest where he used to hunt with his dad. All that thick undergrowth, some of the trees as wide a two men shoulder to shoulder. It always had a kind of mythic feel and Sebastian figures that if he was an alien, he’d probably want to land there too. The idea makes him snort. “I saw an alien once.”

Leah’s come over to retrieve the onions he’s diced and quirks an eyebrow at him. “You’re lying.”

“I am.” Leah snorts, spiriting the cutting board back to the stove. The stove clicks and Sebastian smells the faint, brief noxious scent that fills the air when the gas lights. “You ever miss the Valley?”

Leah stops, cutting board poised over the pot. She looks over her shoulder at him but he can’t parse her expression at all. “Do you?”

Sebastian shrugs, trying to play it cool even though his chest suddenly feels brutally tight. “Sometimes.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Joni emerges in the doorway, wearing shorts and an old band shirt of his, hair wrapped up in a towel.

“Just about how Sebastian can’t dice for shit. You hungry, babe?”

“Definitely.” Joni breezes past them, ruffling Sebastian’s hair with her fingers, on her way to the coffee machine. “Picked up a cake from the bakeshop next to work. We can slice that up. It’s lemony. Think it would go?”

“Hell, why not.”

Sebastian glances over at Leah, trying to read her face, not totally understanding why the conversation so quickly pivoted away from what they were talking about. There’s a stillness in her eyes that he hasn’t seen before. Like she’s locked herself up tight, like the gears in her head are turning so quickly she doesn’t want anyone to see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading guys <3. I love all your comments and kudos.


	30. Three-Way Call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everybody is just trying to pick up the pieces.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea why, but this chapter about fucking killed me. I never slog through my writing like a slogged through this. So it's even more unedited than my usual stuff (which is, to be totally candid, usually pretty unedited). I'll probably go back in and do some fine-tuning eventually, but ignore any glaring typos for now if you can.

Lydia brought danish to work. The kind you get at a grocery store that tastes almost like they’re from a bakery. Just the slight milky preservative kick at the tail end that makes you realize they were definitely made in the backroom of a Joja. But they’re the delicious the way grocery store sheet cake is delicious. Fake in an indulgent way. A frosting on the edges that cracks when you touch it. Whole sugared cherries at the center, suspended in a thick, almost obscenely red filling.

Joni’s had two. Washed them down with a couple of cups of the dark coffee Lydia brewed in the back room when they were both feeling the three pm slump. It tasted faintly like molasses. The whole store smells like it now. That rich, dark scent. Like sugar too and dark, damp grounds leftover in the filter and that welcome mustiness of old books. Joni breathes it in, letting her eyes close, letting herself feel light. It’s easier now.

It’s nearly twilight. The end of a long shift. The clouds a livid pink usually reserved for the height of summer as the sun slips into the harbor. They cut brightly across a grey sky that has, tonight, gone almost turquoise from the reflection of the rising moon. A moon big and pale, floating like a balloon between the buildings up into the newly starry sky. Joni’s crouched in the front corner of the store, unloading a box of donated books, a slight chill coming in from the cold glass of the windows settles on her jeans and every so often Joni rubs them with her palms to try and warm herself up. The bookstore is like a labyrinth and the rows closer to the center register are always warmer like the books have insulated them. She’s on the outskirts now.

Lydia stalks the shop like a cat, checking titles, running her jeweled fingers over each spine, occasionally switching a book here and there on the shelf, adhering always to an organizational system that only she really understands.

She’s been strangely chill about Joni’s near week absence from the shop. Asked only once how her time in the hospital went, nodding sagely when Joni said that it was _fine, thank you. _And Joni’s happy to keep it that way. Especially since some quiet part of her has started to suspect that Lydia knows more than she’s saying, that maybe she herself has been behind those same sterile walls. Joni doesn’t really want to think about it either way and slips a couple tattered Jack Finneys next to the store's pristine single copy of _A Clockwork Orange. _

The two of them are mostly alone, only a few customers browsing the store. A few more will probably show up around nine, couples or groups of coworkers filtering in from the restaurants a few blocks down, drawn by Lydia’s mysterious sign and the warm way the shop glows like a lantern through the front windows. The last couple books at the bottom of the box are romances, so Joni gets back up onto her feet and heads over to the other side of the shop. She passes a couple in the middle of a tense, whispered argument in cookbooks, a teen in boat shoes paging through _Atlas Shrugged _in science fiction, and finally slips past an elderly woman with a prominent trident necklace adding a third smutty romance to the two already tucked under her arm. Joni knows this shop like the back of her hand, she could weave through it blindfolded, and that’s why she pauses before she shelves the two Julie Garwoods at the bottom of her box.

She’s become more or less used to its presence there in the corner of the new releases display at the front of the shop. The sight of its cherry red cover no longer gives her slight vertigo, but finding it missing now makes her feel a creeping sense of unease. She quickly shelves the last two books and weaves her way toward the back, heart pounding in her throat.

Joni finds her boss leaning over the back counter, paging through a magazine, her many rings catching the light as she moves. She clears her throat and Lydia waves two fingers to signal that she’s heard her, never taking her eyes off the magazine. “What happened to _The Winter Fox_?”

“The what?”

Joni clears her throat. “That, uh, new romance we got in. With the red cover.”

Lydia glances up, glasses sliding a little down her nose. “I got rid of it. Sent it back to the press.”

Joni tenses. “Why?”

Lydia scoffs, straightening up and tossing the magazine aside. “Did you read it?”

Joni stuffs her hands into the pockets of her jeans so she doesn’t start in on the skin around her nails. “Never got around to it.”

Lydia laughs again. “Well lucky you. It was terrible. I swear independent publishers will pick up any man with a pulse these days, holy Yoba. Purple prose like I’ve never read in all my years as a bookseller. And as canned as it gets. I’ve never met two flatter characters in all my life. Lord, it was supposed to be a romance, but I’d rather fuck the beast.” Joni’s skin prickles and she fights off the urge to start laughing, sure that she would descend quickly into hysterics “It would have been a total bore if it wasn’t so absolutely unnerving.” Lydia readjusts her glasses and retrieves her magazine, signaling that the conversation is quickly coming to an end. “If our customers want creepy then they can pick up Fowles’ _Collector _over in suspense. At least _that _has some literary merit.” She peers at Joni over the rim of her glasses. “Now weren’t you unpacking that shipment? There’s two more boxes in the backroom.”

The air is frigid as Joni waits for the train, so still it cuts her lungs when she breathes it in. The darkness around her is so complete that the light reflecting off the station pools like liquid. The massive concrete pillars holding the stop up loom over her. It hasn’t snowed yet this winter and there’s something about its absence that makes the whole landscape seem stunted. The temperature’s been steadily falling for days, but the rest of winter hasn’t really caught up.

Joni toes a cigarette butt, watching as it slips across the wet floor, landing in a patch of dirty slush. She shivers in her coat, pulling her scarf higher up on her face. A man sidles up beside her, trying to share some of the warmth blowing out of the station’s standing heater. He lights a cigarette and Joni wonders what Sebastian’s doing right now. She imagines him padding softly through his apartment with the lights off, just the faint glow from the city outlining the hard lines of his body. He never turns the lights on, moves around in the dark like a cat. She can hear the gurgling of his coffee machine, see a thin line of cigarette smoke drift through the window he’s opened just a crack. Joni’s not sure if she should tell him Lydia’s take on Elliot’s book, should tell him that she’s taken it out of the store. She doesn’t really think so. At least not tonight. Not after a shift that’s left her feet aching and her eyelids heavy. There’s no real reason she doesn’t want to talk to him about it. Well, maybe one. Even the briefest mention of Elliot sets Sebastian’s teeth on edge, but it never goes further than that. His temper fizzling before it has the chance to take shape.

During those long, humid days in the greenhouse, Shane had told her all kinds of stories about their high school days. About gridball and the keggers they used to have out by the dock around Marnie’s place.

He had a few stories about Sebastian too, all of them about a boy unrecognizable to Joni now. A sullen kid with a legendary temper. A brawler who once broke a teacher’s nose. Shane couldn’t remember why, though he remembered all the other details vividly. _Blood all over the lockers, think the dude even lost a tooth, _Shane told her, _Sebastian was fucking frothing at the mouth for real. I’ve never seen someone so mad. _He’d almost been expelled, according to Shane, saved only by dumb luck. Demetrius knew the superintendent from graduate school. He’d managed to grovel elaborately enough to keep Seb in school.

It’s hard to imagine. Made even harder by the fact that Joni’s never really asked Sebastian about it. By the time Shane starting telling her these stories, he was long gone and too much has happened since they got back together for there to be a right time. It doesn’t really matter anyway. Not much. Sebastian has clearly worked through whatever was the source of that incredible rage. And, besides, if she brings it up with him she might have to admit how the idea of it ignites both fear and a strange longing inside of her. Safe, she amends. The idea makes her feel safe even if that feels faintly dangerous.

A hiss startles her. The man beside her has ashed his cigarette in an icy puddle at their feet. She watches his broad back as it disappears down the tracks. It’s a lonely quiet out here, even the rush of traffic somehow muted. She should call Shane, and not just to chat about the farm. Yoba, it’s been awhile since they’ve just shot the shit together and remembering those long, sunny days makes her miss him ferociously. But she’s exhausted and all Joni wants to do is smoke a joint in her bathtub and masturbate, preferably while Sebastian listens if she can get the phone cord to stretch enough. So she’ll put a pin in it. Put a pin too in talking to Sebastian about the most recent development with Elliot’s book. She still needs to sort out her own feelings about it and makes a quick mental note to bring it up the next time she sees Dr. Rainier. It feels startlingly well-adjusted and as the train comes rattling to a halt in front of her she is suddenly terrified that she might not recognize her own reflection. But she’s the same as she’s ever been reflected in the distorted windows of the train and when the doors open, billowing a thick cloud of steam out into the night, she tries to let it go. Lydia let her borrow an old book on flower arranging from the shop and as Joni slips through the crowd of late night commuters to a seat in the far corner, she decides she’ll pour all her attention into that.

Joni can hear the phone ringing from down the hall and hurries her clip, swinging her bag over her shoulder. She’d grabbed a couple joja colas from the bodega on her way home from the station and tries to juggle them while slipping her way through the door without giving Goose any space to make a run for it. Sometimes he couldn’t care less about the big world outside their apartment, but other times he seems hellbent on taking a tour of the neighborhood and Joni can never tell which it’s going to be.

She catches the phone on the last ring, panting as she says hello. Joni can tell the moment he answers that something is off. Maybe it’s the tone of his voice, that moody lilt he’d had those first few months in the Saloon, nothing like the pleasant chirp it had taken on in her last few months in the Valley. Or maybe it’s the way he says her name. Business-like, pronouncing each syllable a little harder than he needs to. She’s gotten so used to the tone of his voice, to the little nuances in it. They’d spent months side by side, those warm days in the greenhouse, elbow deep in soil. The friendship that had bloomed so easily between them had kept her afloat when Sebastian left and a heavy guilt starts to settle in her chest. Yoba, when _was_ the last time they talked? She assumed it had been a few weeks, but she can’t actually remember and she’s about to apologize, about to tell Shane _listen, it’s been a really long few months, _and to just lay it all out when he starts talking again. “So still on for February then?” There’s an edge to his voice that tells her that this really should be ringing a bell.

“February.” Joni kneads her temples, trying to wrack her brain. _February, February, February. _She can’t think of anything. Valentine’s Day? Why the hell would that matter to him? She holds the phone between her ear and shoulder and flips through the notepad on the table, looking for any clue in either her or Leah’s hastily scrawled notes and reminders. Nothing. “Um, sorry, man. Just uh quickly remind me, um, w-what’s in February again?”

For a moment, she’s sure he’s hung up. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Joni swallows hard. Her brain is frighteningly blank and she can tell that he’s waiting for her to say something. But she has nothing. Yoba, it’s been such a long goddamn day. She hears him huff over the line. “Fucking goddammit Joni! I got us tickets!”

She flinches. Joni’s not sure she’s ever heard Shane raise his voice and all the small hairs on her skin stand straight up. “Tickets? What are you even talking about?”

“You agreed!”

Her temper frays and now it’s her turn to raise her voice. “Agreed to what!?”

“It doesn’t matter now!”

“Oh, stop!” She starts to pace, phone pressed tightly to her cheek. “You have no idea about the week I’ve had, _seriously._”

He scoffs. “Okay, sure, whatever. And, oh, what the fuck is up with you fucking Sebastian again?”

“I’d say we’re more than fucking.” Joni starts to scratch at the spot beneath her collarbone, pacing faster now. Goose wanders out into the room, jumping onto the couch and watching her quietly.

He laughs, the sound so ominous and threatening that Joni stops her pacing and balls her free hand into a fist. “You know that’s exactly what he said. Smug as shit about it too.” He scoffs. “I really can’t believe it. I can’t believe you went running back to him after what he fucking did to you.”

“Oh go fuck yourself!” Shane makes a sound that is almost a yelp and Goose runs from the room, yowling, and it’s then that Joni realizes that she has honest god just screamed at him.

“Fuck, I’m sorry.” All at once his tone changes. He sounds again like the boy who’d offered to help her with the farm, who stayed quietly by her side as she tried to pick up the pieces that Sebastian left for her. “Fuck, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. This isn’t how I wanted this conversation to go at all.”

Joni lowers her voice too, shifting on her feet. “Yeah, well, tone it down, okay? Holy shit.”

“Yeah, yeah fuck. Just, um, forget we had this conversation, okay?” He sighs. “Or, I mean, you don’t have to. Fuck, I just. I was really excited for February and I just knew…I just knew you’d forgotten. I don’t know how, I just…I just did.”

Joni sighs too, resting her elbows on the hall table. “What was February?”

“The gridball game.” Oh. Oh _fuck. _

“Shit." A beat. "I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, I know. It’s cool.” 

“We could still go.” Joni flinches. What the fuck is she doing? She barely remembers agreeing to this in the first place, and she doesn’t give two shits about gridball, but god she’s so tired and she’s trying to parse through everything that’s happened in that past few months, trying to remember everything she’s said to him, or him to her. 

“Yeah, um, definitely sure. Why don’t you…think about it. I don’t want to…” He clears his throat. “I don’t want to pressure you into something.” He clears his throat again, voice going quiet. “I know that Sebastian doesn’t-.”

“Sebastian doesn’t what?”

“We’re not like friends”

Yoba, Joni’s head hurts. Her temples just absolutely throbbing and all she wants to do is end this fucking phone call. “I’m not asking you to be friends. I’m not even asking you talk.”

“You had him call me.”

Joni groans. “Fucking hell, Shane. If you had any idea what the fuck the past three weeks have looked like for me.”

“Okay, so tell me then.”

Joni stiffens. “Another time.”

“Sure, whatever.”

Joni sighs. “Listen is everything okay on the farm?”

“I’m not gonna burn your farm down just because we’re having a fight.” 

“Okay, first of all, not comforting that you immediately went to _burning it down._” She hears Shane laugh and the sound of it makes her lips quirk up just a little. “And second, this isn’t a fight.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Would you like it to be?”

“No, because I really am trying to apologize.”

“Well so am I.” 

Shane sighs and the sound is so long and exhausted that Joni feels it in her bones. “Why don’t we…talk in a couple weeks or something. We can iron out February. Is that…okay?”

“Yeah.” Joni leans heavily on the table, her eyes closed, free hand at her temples. “Yeah, that sounds fine.”

“Right.” A few beats of silence. “Bye.”

Joni holds the phone to her ear long after he hangs up. The radiator clanks loudly behind her. A door slams down the hall.

“I’m mad at you.” She can almost hear the gears turning in Sebastian’s head. He’d sounded tired when he picked up, but not like she’d woken him up. Joni figures he’s been up working, only coming up for air because she called twice. And the sort of frantic way he answered left a searing note of guilt and embarrassment stuck inside of her. It makes it easier to be a little biting. “I’m calling because I’m mad.”

“O-okay.”

“It’s like a waning mad though.”

“Right, um…I’m sorry?”

“For leaving me.”

Sebastian whistles over the line. “Right, okay. Do you want me to come over? I’ll call a cab. You probably want to talk about this face to face.”

“It’s water under the bridge now.”

The way Sebastian exhales sounds like the most nervous, most desperate laugh she’s ever heard. “Water under the bridge. Right. That’s why you’re calling me at midnight about it?”

They’re toeing a line like they used to. Between fighting and teasing. If he were here in the apartment, they’d probably also be about to fuck. “Also I’m pissed at you about Shane?”

“About Shane?” She can imagine the way he’s fussing with his hair. “Listen, did I miss somethi-“

“Why were you an asshole to Shane on the phone?”

Sebastian groans. “Oh Yoba, what the fuck did he tell you?”

“He told me you were an ass to him on the phone.” Joni flops cross-legged onto the ground, pulling the receiver with her and resting it on one knee.

“Did he tell you that he hung up on me? Huh? No, I imagine he conveniently left that out.” She can tell he’s gritting his teeth by the tight way his voice sounds and she frowns.

“Yoba, what is up with the two of you!?”

“Shane’s a prick.”

Joni leans back, resting on one hand. “Stop saying that.”

Well, he is, so.”

Okay, I’m done. What’s the story?”

Sebastian sounds genuinely taken aback. “The story?”

“Yeah. Tell me the dark, sinister small town secret you’ve been sworn to never speak of.”

Sebastian laughs. “What are you even talking about?”

“Well, there must be some reason you don’t like him. So what? Did he like kill somebody and the whole town covered it up? What?” Sebastian snorts and Joni tries to keep the smile from her face. She’s joking and serious and they’re weaving together in a haphazard braid. “I’m serious. He wrap his car around a tree driving drunk? What?”

Sebastian sighs. “He’s a good guy.”

Joni sits up a little straighter and frowns. “Okay, hello pivot.” A harsh wind rolls down the street, rattling the window panes. It has cold teeth and Joni wraps her sweater a little more around her.

“He really is. Yeah, he was a pretty prolific drunk and he was kind of a douchebag in high school, but like, he’s not scummy. He’s not bad.”

The wind is really picking up now and as the walls groan under its strength. The building feels suddenly too tall for its width and Joni imagines the panes of glass shattering all at once, a funnel of wind rushing through their apartments. The thought is so wild, so vivid, that she almost laughs. “Is this some kind of joke? You literally just finished telling me what a complete fucking asshole Shane is.”

“Listen, I just… I just don’t like the way he…” Sebastian sighs. “Did you guys fuck? After I moved to Zuzu.” Joni straightens up. He sighs again. “I mean it doesn’t matter, I just-“

“Yeah we did.” Joni replies quickly. Sebastian exhales. “_Once._”

“I think I knew that.” His voice is a little muffled, like he’s running his hand over his mouth. “I guess maybe I’m just jealous.”

“Jealous? Sebastian, we fucked one time after you left, I swear to god.”

“No, it isn’t that.” He sounds tired again. Older. “I guess I’m just jealous that he was the one who stepped up. That I wasn’t brave enough to be there for you when you needed me and he was.”

“Sebastian,_ holy shit._”

He laughs weakly. “Yeah, this is probably a conversation we should be having in person huh?”

“You think?” They both fall quiet. This is always how it goes, always a crescendo into tenderness and Joni wishes he was here so she could brush his hair away from his eyes., so she can feel the warmth of his skin. “For what it’s worth, you’re here now.”

“Always. For anything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading, guys <3


	31. Alexander

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes the Valley unfurls itself and old memories rise again to the surface.

The fish in Marianne’s tank always look so depressed. It’s isn’t the first time he’s had this thought, but today’s meeting has dragged on so long that’s it’s the only thought he’s had for hours. Sebastian usually finds himself watching them when the meetings turn from technical expertise to marketing and his already frayed nerves force him to either drift off or double down and after Marianne put the kibosh on smoking during meetings two weeks ago doubling down isn’t really an option anymore. So he watches the fish, their tank positioned so perfectly behind where Marianne sits at the head of the conference table that he can pretend he’s paying close attention.

The fish are big and the way their brightly colored fins sometimes jerk when they move makes Sebastian think that in the wild they might have darted from place to place. But in Marianne’s big wall-mounted tank, they float listlessly through the eerily too blue water, no place to hide.

Their glum faces somehow even sadder in contrast to their bright, confetti bodies. Sebastian used to wonder if they just hated the meetings, but once, when the office was mostly empty for the night he crept into the conference room to look, only to find them just as miserable looking as always.

He’s always liked fish. Weirdly, he supposes, considering neither Robin nor Demetrius had ever, as far as he remembers, even gone fishing themselves, much less taken him. But he’s always been drawn to the way they look, the strange movement of their gills and the deep darkness of their world. He’d imagine all those rainy days out at the beach, slipping into the cool, darkness of the water, his neck opening in slits for him to breath.

The mermaid on his thigh was his very first real tattoo and a few months later he’d had a friend stick and poke a message in a bottle on his wrist. There’s an old-timey dive helmet on his right shoulder, choked by the tentacles of a sea monster. He’s a boy born and bred in the mountains, but he’s covered himself in water. And maybe that’s his answer, that’s his why. He always was trying to run away. Aaron kicks him hard in the ankle and Sebastian shoots him a look before a quick nod of Aaron’s head reminds him where the fuck he is. He looks up at the rest of the table like he’s waking from a dream. Marianne’s staring right at him. “Sebastian, hello. Nice of you to join us.” Sebastian straightens up, clears his throat. “We were opening the floor to the developers. Seeing if any of you had something to add.”

Sebastian swipes his hair from his forehead. “Um, no. No, nothing to add.”

He takes a long, winding route to his office, hoping Marianne will lose his scent, still bright with embarrassment from the call out. He can’t stop thinking about the fish either. Or fish in general, actually. There must be something that gave him this odd water-logged fixation and the idea that he’s missing some sort of memory, maybe one with his father, sets his teeth on edge. He brushes the idea away. There’s no time for it. No space in his already overcrowded head and he winds down the stairs to the floor below, counting each one to try and clear his thoughts.

He’s busy trying to figure out if he can both run to the gyro place five blocks down and still have time to call Joni while she’s on her lunch break, when the memory hits him like a freight train. He’s young. Young enough that his father’s death is still hanging off him in sheets. Summer light filters through the dense, verdant leaves of the trees, warming his bare back. He’s crouched in the wet grass beside a pond, tongue stuck out between his teeth, brow furrowed in concentration. An old man sits stolidly at his side, watching Sebastian as he cleans a fish, the paring knife enormous in his hands. Every so often the old man will lean over, whispering quiet corrections, sometimes blanketing Sebastian’s little hand in his own, guiding him over the scales. He’s tall and wiry. There’s a quiet, coiled strength about him, belied by his scruffy dark hair and a thick mustache that only accentuates the deep dimples that flash on his face when he smiles. Which he does often and all the way up to his eyes. Clear as the tidepools on the beach. Sebastian stops so abruptly in the hallway that his coffee splashes over the lip of his mug. The old man has Joni’s eyes. Yoba, how the fuck had he forgotten this?

He puts some of the pieces together on his walk back from the coffee shop, hood up, jean jacket pulled tightly around him. The fact that he’d known Joni’s grandfather isn’t news. Everyone in town knew Alexander Seydoux. As a teenager, he’d see the old man come riding into town in his rusty old jalopy of a trucks couple times a week. Sebastian would spare him a couple grouchy minutes for small talk. He always had a soft spot for the geezer that he could never quite pin down, especially when everyone else in town just got Sebastian’s scowl and his middle finger. But now there’s more, edging on the corners of his memory. 

At his first physical the month after that horrible day in the forest, the town doctor told Sebastian that grief came in stages. An ancient old man with thick rheumatoid knuckles whose hands shook when he held his stethoscope up to Sebastian’s stuttering heart. He told Sebastian that he would travel along the path of grief like a boat down a river.

He remembers, in those months after his father’s death, living in a whirlpool. _Anger. Denial. Anger. Denial. _There were supposed to be three other stages, but Sebastian hadn’t seen them. He would lay awake at night listening to her pace, listening to her cry, and in the morning they would sit quietly in the kitchen, pretending that there had never been a third chair at the table. The air heavy. The foundations cracking.

And then he remembers the farm. It grows out of his mind like a lone mushroom in the forest. Like it’s come from nowhere, its roots hidden in the dense undergrowth.

The farmhouse looked a lot different then. The second floor was still holding together alright and the outside wood had a crisp coat of white paint. By the time Joni moved in the stairs had collapsed and years of exposure to the weather had destroyed the paint entirely. That’s probably why the memories of that summer never resurfaced. He’d always ignored those little moments of déjà vu. The whole town would give him déjà vu if he let it. And by the time he was spending any real amount of time there, he’d chalked that homey feeling up to Joni herself. But now that he’s thinking about it, he might have spent a little more time wondering why we never needed to be shown where anything was. How that one summer night when the lightning fried the circuit board he’d known exactly which panel to press to get into the crawl space, had known there would be spare candles down there. How had these memories disappeared so swiftly, especially when there were so many memories he’s been forced to relive. His father’s blood on his boots, the bright crimson bleeding pink into the snow. His knuckles scattering plaster as he beat them into the wall at his principal’s office. His mother watching him with the same vacant, helpless expression she’d had the day of his father’s funereally, pain shooting up his arm. The corners of Joni’s lip twitching down, realizing dawning in her eyes as he swung off his bike, as he told her it was over. How brutally unfair is it that the soft memories of a summer would fade helplessly into the background.

Sebastian heads back into his office, fresh coffee in hand, and shuts the door tightly behind him. He pulls the shades down and powers his monitor off until the room is dark save for a thin stream of light coming in from under the door. He settles in his chair, legs stretched out and closes his eyes. He tries to follow the thread this memory has given him.

He remembers a sunny morning, furniture piled all out on the porch, jeans rolled up high past their ankles, the sweet smell of soap and skating fast and reckless in sock feet over the wet floorboards. 

He remembers the pain of a singed left hand, the crackle of a campfire. He remembers crying like a baby and Joni’s grandfather’s big soft eyes. The cloying smell of honey as he rubbed it onto the burn, so fresh bits of waxy comb still stuck to it.

He remembers little sips of coffee, giggled promises that he wouldn’t tell his mom about it. He remembers a heavy wrench in his hand, remembers feeling full of nervous purpose. Joni’s grandfather smelled like wood smoke and salt and Sebastian can’t believe he’s kept these memories buried for so long. He drags his hands down his face, exhaling slowly, the air around him still and heavy. He lights a cigarette and takes a long drag

He remembers evening’s half-light and piling into an old truck. The riggings of a sail, the sound of metal scrapping wood, the feeling like the boat is jerking out from under you when it finally releases into the open water. The dark stillness of the ocean, the smell of salt lingering on his skin when he woke up the next morning in bed back at his mother’s house. 

He doesn’t know why he’s remembering all these things. Why now and he is overcome with emotion, practically glued to his chair. When he lays a hand over his face he finds his skin hot to the touch. A memory breaks free, this one more fully articulated and even though Sebastian feels an acute terror at its sudden presence, he lets it wash over him. He’s sitting out on the porch as the sun slips below the trees, fireflies bobbing lazily through the air. Joni’s grandfather made him iced tea so thick and sweet it made his teeth zing. His stomach already full of grilled fish and a vinegary salad of tomato and cucumber. And he asks, chipping at the wooden steps with his fingernails, if maybe one day he’ll have a house just like this. Her grandfather smiles and tells him that yes, maybe someday he would. Sebastian huffs, spilling a little of his iced tea on his shoes. “What if I want this house?” He’d asked.

He can’t remember what his laugh sounded like, but he feels warm just trying to remember it. He remembers him laying a heavy hand on his shoulder and squeezing. “Well, you’d have to fight my granddaughter for it.”

Sebastian huffs again, squirming on the top step. “I’ve never ever seen a girl here. Ever.”

“No, I suppose you haven’t.”

When Sebastian opens his eyes again, the darkness is consuming. He is sloshing with emotions. Can’t parse them, can’t even begin to identify them. He rakes his fingers through his hair and closes his eyes again. The darkness of his own body is more comforting. He hears footsteps coming down the hall, hears them stop outside his door. It swishes softly open and the light spills red over his closed eyelids.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading <3


	32. Marianne

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian's lies catch up to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don’t kill me lol. We’ve got a lot of shit to resolve and it’s gonna be a bumpy ride (but not too bumpy ;) )

He knows it’s her. The horrible, stiff feeling in his chest that only she elicits has settled heavy inside of him. He doesn’t even have to turn around. But he does. Maybe that’s because he knows it’s expected of him. Yoba, where did this even come from? This sudden desire to lay down and take it, to bend himself into all kinds of shapes for this company that has stripped all the things he loved about coding and left him to eat scraps.

He smiles as he turns in his chair to face her. It feels clownish. It makes his cheeks hurt. Funny how the impulse to be the good country boy is stronger here than it ever was in the Valley. Funny how the role fits so easy. Marianne’s leaning in the doorway, backlit by the harsh fluorescence of the hallway, and the sort of practiced nonchalance she’s trying to convey is so uncharacteristic she reminds him a little of a marionette.

She slips into the dark of his office with a little laugh. “Oh my. Dare I ask what you’re doing here in the dark?” Sebastian can’t think of anything to say to that, instead just leans over and powers his computer back up. It whirrs back to life. A dry, almost soothing sound in the silent room. He’s about to power up the monitor, when Marianne stops him, fingers tight around his wrist. “No need to get back to work just yet. I can think of a few productive things we can do with the lights out.”

This time Sebastian can’t hide the way he recoils from her. He pulls away violently, face scrunched in disgust. She’s never been this aggressive in person. He takes a hard look at her. She doesn’t look drunk and that’s more unnerving than if she’d been swaying or slurring. Marianne sighs, her heels clacking across the floor as she backtracks, her eyes never leaving him. She flips on the light and Sebastian flinches. He feels like a dark, wretched thing. Almost literary and all he can do is slump away from her, nails digging tightly into his palms. But when she closes the door with a soft click, Sebastian comes rushing back to himself. He straightens up, looking at her head on. He’s nearly thirty. A grown ass man and if his hardscrabble life in the boonies taught him anything, it sure as hell wasn’t to back down like a cowering dog. “I’m seeing someone actually, so I really don’t think this is something that is going to happen again.” He shores himself up a little more. “Between us.”

She pauses and then in a tone like she’s talking to a very young, very naïve child: “I can be discreet Sebastian.”

“No.” It comes out louder than he meant it to, less controlled than he wanted, but Marianne doesn’t seem moved by his refusal at all.

She arranges herself on the corner of his desk, picks up one of his pens and twirls it absently between her fingers. The sense of dread that sparked when she opened the door now rushes into his throat. She scoots further onto the desk and her pencil skirt rides up her thighs, revealing just the hint of a garter holding up what he’d before assumed was just hose but sees now has an ornate lacy finish. Sebastian wonders, with a hard swallow, if she wears these all the time or just today and he isn’t sure which is worse. “How old was your father?”

Sebastian blinks up at her. Any train of thought he was managing to hold onto vanishes. “What?”

“When he died.”

“Oh, um…” The math takes him too long.

She takes his collar between two of her fingers and tugs. Just lightly, like he’s a dog on a leash. “Come to dinner tonight and I’ll consider overlooking the fact that you took your little two-week vacation under false pretenses.”

“My dad is dead.” Sebastian manages to grit out.

“Yes, in 1973.” Sebastian goes still and Marianne breaks into a Cheshire grin. “Kouris is a real doozy of a last name and _did you know _the city library has the most marvelous collection of newspapers. From all over the region. Isn’t that something? Special interest stories, local news, _obituaries._”

His blood is ice. The room starts to wobble and he vaguely wonders if this is what Joni feels like sometimes, like the world is about to tip over and take him with it. “Did you _seriously _go through twenty years of fucking obituaries on the off chance I lied to you?”

Marianne shrugs. “Wanted to pay my respects. Thought I might attend the service. Imagine my surprise when I couldn’t find an obituary.”

“That’s fucking insane.”

“The _Pelican Town Register_ only prints once a week. Not all that much to go through really.” She drums her fingers on his desk. Sebastian flinches with each clack. “Made an afternoon out of it.”

“That’s _fucking insane_.”

Marianne’s face goes eerily blank, eyes drifting to a spot on the ceiling. “You lied to me.”

Sebastian straightens up in his chair, his anger quickly distilling into fear. “I’m sorry. I-“

“Hunting accident.” She examines her nails. “Tragic really. Very rural.” Her eyes flit to him. “Were you there?”

Sebastian recoils, practically snarling. “That is none of your bus-“

She cuts him off, hand in the air and he has the sudden urge to rip his phone from the wall, to send it crashing through those pristine windows. He swallows it. “Now, I think you’ve proven yourself a valuable asset to this company, don’t you? Inventive. Committed. Personable. _Usually._” She takes a deep breath, feigning hesitation. “But routine employee assessments are, of course, necessary. And to be expected with new employees.”

Sebastian swallows hard. “I need this job.”

“No one’s debating how badly you need this job.”

He’s never been smaller than this, never felt so cornered. He fights off the impulse to cry. “Marianne. I’m so sorry I lied, I-“

She taps his cheek with a manicured finger and he goes rigid. “Why don’t you come to my apartment this weekend? We can do your assessment privately. I have no doubt we can clear all of this right up.”

He has every intention of fucking these feelings right out of him. Shows up at Joni’s door filled to the brim with coarse energy, barely containing dark, old impulses to smash and break and shout. The tension he usually keeps close to the chest, uncoiling as he steps into the apartment. He picks Joni up by the hips before she can even close the door behind him. His kiss is all teeth as he presses her up against the wall. Her fabric shorts are down past her knees before she can even speak, his hand hunting between her legs before he even has a fully formed plan. He doesn’t need one. He doesn’t have the room or the time to make one and he’s about to start fucking her with his fingers when she presses her palm hard against his chest, wriggling as away from him as she can while they’re pressed tight together like this. ‘What happened?” He hesitates. Joni frowns. “Something is wrong. What happened?”

Sebastian’s first instinct is to bolt. To run from the apartment and never stop. To go until he collapses, like a fish traveling upstream. Like a fool. He wants to stitch himself up, wants to curl up and hide, but she’s got her hard, clear eyes on him and all he can do is shrink away from her, shrugging as he sets her gently back on her feet.

“Nothing.” His voice catches. He can feel that his eyes are too wide. “Nothing. Everything’s fine.”

“Sebastian.” She reaches for him but he recoils without thinking. He can’t handle touch like this. Soft, thoughtful. He wants frenzy. Darkness passes over her eyes.

He’s not prepared for her tidal wave. She pushes him bodily away from her, voice just on the edge of tears and the sound of it sends him headfirst into that black hole of self-loathing he’d barely clawed himself out of on the cab ride over. “You fucking promised!” She is crying now. Fat tears rolling down her cheeks. “We promised each other!” She raps her fingers over her heart. “No more secrets. No more hiding things.”

“You don’t need this right now.”

Joni straightens and all the emotion bleeds out of her, like it had that horrible day on the porch. She’s unreadable to him all over again, terrifyingly blank. “Fuck that.”

He shakes his head. “I’m serious. I’m trying to protect you. I’m trying to make sure that you’re-“

“_Fuck you_.” Sebastian closes his eyes, fatigue settling hard and fast on his shoulders. The apartment smells like honey, like over-steeped tea and resin. Like the woman he loves. He remembers all at once where he is, who he’s with. What’s happened. Between them. To her. All of it. When he opens his eyes, the jagged way she’s looking at him cuts right to the quick. “I think you should go.”

The pain is physical. “_Joni._”

“You made a promise to me.”

“Joni, please.”

She wipes at her cheeks. “Whatever this is, I can handle this. I can carry some of this weight. I’m not this mess anymore. I’m not fragile.”

“I know, I _know._” And in that instant he does, knows it in his bones. But he knows too the way her eyes have shifted. She’s already closed off to him. “Go home, Sebastian.” She reaches out like she’s going to brush his hair off his forehead, but stops herself, pulling her hand back to her chest. “Call me in the morning. Think about what I’ve said.”

He’s alone on the cold sidewalk, cigarette burning itself out between his fingers when he remembers that he wanted to tell her about her grandfather, about his memories. Sebastian closes his eyes. He can almost feel the warmth of the farmhouse, the warmth of Joni’s arms. He hails a cab. Ice cracks under his feet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading <3. You all mean so much to me!


	33. Retribution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian falls back on old habits.

He wasn’t really expecting the geezer to call him, figured the guy would probably toss his number immediately in the trash. But sure enough, it’s the old man from the bookstore on the line when Sebastian answers on the last ring, relaying in a bored voice that edges strangely on resentment that Elliot Turner is going to be doing a reading at the store that evening.

Even as he hastily scrawls down the time and address, Sebastian’s warring with himself. Some older, wiser part of him is screaming to throw the note in the trash, to forget about this phone call, forget about Elliot entirely. He drowns it out easily with rage. With the memory of that dark bruise blooming livid on Joni’s face, of how small and terrified she’d looked in her room those hours before the hospital, the way that cherry red cover glowed in the half-darkness of her apartment. The memories ignite something old and ruthless in him, something long buried. He knows he should be worried about this, that these feelings should scare him, just a little. But he’s got Marianne’s threats simmering in the back of his mind too and Joni’s sharp dismissal and, honestly, he doesn’t have a whole lot of fucks left to give. 

Which is how he ends up in the back row of a shabbily organized audience of metal folding chairs, wedged between two boys who can’t be older than seventeen, waiting for the person he hates probably most in the entire world to step out onto the makeshift stage at the front of the room and take a seat on the stool set out for him.

The bookstore seems even duller at night than it had the afternoon he’d first come in. The fluorescent lighting and the wide open space make the place feel more like a Joja Mart than a bookstore. His chair is tucked back beside what he assumes is the self-help section. A thick book called _The Way of the Superior Man _looms overhead and when the kid beside him lights a flavored cigarillo, Sebastian has half a mind to beat him to death with it.

The old man who runs the place is standing listlessly in the corner, arms crossed over his chest, eyes darting from face to face. He doesn’t seem to recognize Sebastian, which is good. He doesn’t want to draw attention to himself. Not yet.

Sebastian stretches his legs out and slumps his shoulders, sinking into the ratty hoodie he wore to try and blend in. He’d read the vibe completely wrong though, judging by the sheer density of sperrys and blazers. He should have known that this would be the kind of crowd Elliot’s shitty book would attract.

The crowd isn’t really that big considering the number of chairs they put out. And it’s pretty much only teenage boys with a couple mousy, nervous looking young women hanging around the periphery. Which is what he’ll tell Joni. _If _he ever tells her about this. Something he’s still solidly on the fence about. He doesn’t have much time to consider it though before the air in the room shifts. Elliot steps onto the stage and Sebastian swallows the urge to bum rush him. He flips his hood up over his head and slumps down a little more, hoping that Elliot doesn’t immediately spot him.

He looks pretty much the same as Sebastian remembers. Same idiotic coat, same flowing hair and that pisses him off. That he should be so unchanged when the rest of them have gone through hell. Sebastian lights a cigarette, leaning back. The chair groans under his weight. Elliot sniffs the air, looking suddenly unsettled. Sebastian averts his eyes, letting his dark hair fall across his face, hoping it’s enough to disguise him. It apparently works, because soon Sebastian hears the creak of the stool. Elliot clears his throat.

It’s not the reading that does him in. Sure, he’d fumed through every fucking word, but it’s the Q&A after that makes him feel really homicidal. The punk next to him asks if the inspiration for the muse in the book was based on a real person and Elliot has the audacity to say that the character is a composite. Like he hadn’t taken every piece of Joni, hadn’t splayed her out on the page for all these men to dissect. For his own fragile ego.

It goes on like that for nearly half an hour. Sniveling kids asking pandering questions, Elliot smiling at the sound of his own voice, clearly basking in the attention. Sebastian is about to bail, truly at his limit, when the questions abruptly stop. Sebastian glances around, uncurling his fingers from the tight fists they’d formed when he wasn’t paying attention. Elliot smiles at the audience, thanks them, and then disappears into the shop’s back office. The old owner takes his place at the microphone. His voice sounds robotic and dull after nearly two hours of Elliot’s exaggerated, florid speech. He says something about signed copies of the book, something about forming a line. Sebastian takes this as his cue and ducks out, hands trembling, jaw so tight his teeth ache.

He smokes one cigarette after the other. His hands go numb. His lips go numb. He watches as the boys file out one by one, watches them head into the night. He waits. His hands have stopped trembling. His mind feels cavernous. Thoughts echoing then slipping easily away. Sebastian closes his eyes when he hears the door swing open a final time. He takes a long, deep breath then opens them again, glancing over toward the source of the sound. Elliot trots out after the owner, thick cashmere scarf wrapped around his neck. Sebastian wonders if he bought it with money from the book, entertains the fantasy of pulling it apart thread by thread. They’d been chatting as they walked through the door, but Elliot doesn’t bother sticking around as the old man starts to lock up. He doesn’t even tell him goodbye, jut heads down the mostly empty sidewalk, swaying a little, humming to himself. Sebastian pushes off the wall and flips his hood back over his head. The old man looks up and, for a moment, their eyes meet. Sebastian drops his cigarette onto the sidewalk and starts down the sidewalk.

Elliot doesn’t notice him. Not at first. Their breath billows out in front of them as they walk. Elliot a few feet ahead, Sebastian sticking quietly to the shadows behind. The night feels particularly dark, particularly cold. His plan was half-formed to begin with and as they head down toward the subway station, it feels even more amorphous. Sebastian’s starting to feel like a fool, starting to think that going to this reading was just an exercise in masochism, when Elliot ducks into an alleyway. It’s an idiotic thing to do in the middle of the night. Sebastian stops for only a moment before he goes in after him.

The city is muted here, their footfalls loud and clear. He sees Elliot stiffen, slow. He must be able to sense Sebastian now. Maybe he had the whole time. The alleyway a detour meant to shake him, but Sebastian can see solid brick at the end of the line. And now Elliot can see it too and his hands curls into nervous fists. Sebastian feels in and out of himself. When he speaks, his voice is low, raspy. “Hey man.” The hairs on the back of Elliot’s neck rise one by one. He spins around, breathing in a shallow way that reminds Sebastian of a deer caught at the end of the line, suddenly aware, if only vaguely, of the hunter just out of view, of the danger rising all around. The alley is empty. There’s a few doors that lead to it, but their handles are rusted. Nobody’s opened those in years. Elliot’s trapped himself and as his eyes dart from dumpster to dumpster, Sebastian sees that he knows it now too. “Long time no see.” Sebastian lights a cigarette, towering over the now visibly trembling man. He takes his time on the exhale. “How ya been?”

Elliot’s nose twitches, his voice clipped. “Fine.”

Sebastian waves the cigarette lazily back and forth, studying the glowing tip. Shit, nothing hurts quite like a burn and maybe Elliot knows that too, because when Sebastian’s eyes flit from it to his face, Elliot flinches. “Yeah, I bet. A published book. Congratu-fucking-lations.” Elliot flinches again, eyes darting quickly past Sebastian. Looking for an exit, probably, looking for someone to call out to. Sebastian knows his eyes have darkened, knows that all the tendons in this throat are twitching. An old friend from high school told him that sometimes, when he got really angry, he’d look like an entirely different person. He wonders what Elliot sees, decides quickly that he doesn’t actually fucking care. “I’m gonna cut to the chase.” Sebastian’s footsteps are so loud, so heavy.

Elliot looks brittle. “You can’t do this to me.”

Sebastian cocks his head, a muscle jumps in his jaw. He feels brittle too. “Can’t do what?” Elliot says nothing, looks like he isn’t even breathing. “You have a lot of fucking nerve, you know that?”

Elliot shudders, his voice like a squeak. “I’ll call the cops.”

Sebastian laughs, advancing on him again. He lets his cigarette fall from his fingers with a hiss. “You think I’m gonna let you out of this alley?” Elliot takes two shaky steps backward. Sebastian rubs his chin, feigning thoughtfulness. “The cops, huh? Interesting fucking choice. What are you gonna fucking tell them? You gonna tell them how you beat the shit out of Joni? How you got run out of town?”

“Those charges were dropped.”

Sebastian grits his teeth. “Because she’s scared of you. But I’m not scared of you. Not even a little bit,” He cocks his head again, lips tight. “And you know it, don’t you? You little fucking idiot.”

That seems to do something to Elliot and he puffs himself up, eyes suddenly blazing. “Seems like you’re the one she should be afraid of! Cornering me here like a brute!”

Sebastian pounds his fist hard against the brick. Pain shoots up his wrist and it is _exhilarating_. “I should fucking kill you.” Fear rushes back into Elliot’s eyes. He cowers, likes he’s realizing all over again how big Sebastian is, maybe realizing for the first time how angry Sebastian can get. Or maybe not. Elliot should have been more careful when he wrote him a beast. “I should fucking lay you out, you piece of shit. I should you beat you until there’s nothing fucking left. You are such a miserable little prick. You don’t deserve to even breathe the same air as her!” Elliot braces himself, hands flying in front of his face, and all the wind goes out of Sebastian’s sails. He recoils, fists loosening. The feeling is old and familiar, but it fits awkwardly in him now. Sebastian exhales, kneading his temples. He’s too old for this shit. He’s _better _than this shit. He imagines Joni getting a call that he’s in the fucking county lockup, imagines her looking fearfully up at him and sighs. What the fuck was he even thinking? Elliot is still staring at him, eyes as wide as dinner plates, hands out uselessly in front of him. Sebastian grabs him by the collar and gives him one hard shake. Elliot yelps and when Sebastian lets go, he has to scramble to say upright. “Get the fuck out of here.” Elliot breaks into a run, ragged sobs echoing down the lonely alley.

The nearest payphone is two blocks away in front of the most rundown 7/11 he’s ever seen. Sebastian steps gingerly over a sleeping homeless man and sighs heavily once he reaches the phone. He’s brutally embarrassed and a little nauseous, feels like he’s coming down from a bad trip all shaky and cold. It takes him two tries to put his quarters into the slot and even longer to dial her number with the way his fingers are trembling.

Joni answers absentmindedly. He can hear her chewing, wonders what she’s eating. Imagining her flitting around her warm apartment makes him feel even colder and he pulls his hoodie tighter around him. “What’s up?”

“Hey.”

There must be something off in his voice, because Joni’s voice gets a little slow, a little nervous. “Hey.”

Sebastian exhales. “I need you to know that I _do _trust you. More than I’ve ever trusted another human being. And I love you, so much, and…” he closes his eyes, “I’ll do better. I promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading guys <3


	34. Thaw*

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian comes clean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! Sorry for the slow updates! I’m working on a couple of different projects (including some non-fic stuff) and also back at University. But worry not! I have the entire rest of this story all outlined and will be updating it (hopefully) on a weekly schedule.

He comes over late that night, after the call, looking almost feral. She’s never seen him quite like that – hair wild, eyes blazing, jaw so tight it looks like his teeth will ache in the morning – and, at first, she recoils from him. And then, like he can feel the energy pulsing inside of her, he shrinks, eyes wide and pleading. Shivering all over like a stray dog seeking shelter from the rain. Joni reaches out to touch him, tentatively, almost fearfully, and when she finally makes contact his skin is like ice. And it’s that touch, that brief contact of her fingertips against his jaw, that seems to propel him forward, collapsing like a child into her arms. He doesn’t say anything, just holds onto her for dear life.

They stay like that for a long time in her living room, the wind howling outside. She strokes his hair, whispers soft, sweet things to him. He’s so still in her arms, so perfectly still, and it all terrifies her.

He’s quiet in the shower too. Lets the hot water sluice down his body without a word. He looks warmer at least. Sebastian talks to her then only with his hands, his lips. Kissing softly along her jaw, hands holding her tightly against him, thumb worrying circles on her back. Always so tender, always so safe. But Joni can’t stem the tide of terror rising up inside of her, realizing then, in such stark clarity, that it had always been his words that soothed her. And now it seems like he can’t find them.

He seems peaceful now, sleeping softly beside her, bright winter light filtering through the windows. It’s late morning, she guesses. Joni hasn’t put new batteries in her alarm clock in months, but she’s got a pretty good gauge on the sun these days. He’d slept soundly. As far as she could tell. But she hadn’t slept a wink. Tossing and turning, trying to figure out what had happened. Panic settling easily inside of her.

“Hey.” His voice is heavy with sleep as he leans over and kisses her, pulling her from her thoughts. His hand hunts down her stomach, searching between her legs. This is always how it is with them. Early mornings fumbling, their bodies pressed together, soft sighs, wet moans. But last night still hangs heavy over her.

She stops him. “Sebastian.”

He peers blearily at her. “What?” He wakes up a little more, sitting up on his elbows. “What? What? Are you okay?”

“What happened yesterday?” He sighs, looking everywhere but at her. She can tell he’s thinking, trying to craft something up, but she’s not having it. Joni takes his face hard in her hands. “Enough of this. Enough. You promised me. You promised me that we wouldn’t do this anymore. That we would be _honest._”

He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath. When he opens them again, his gaze is bottomless, piercing. She tenses. “I think I’m…regressing.”

“Regressing?”

“Like I’m not handling things as well as I used to.”

She sits up a little straighter. “Okay.”

He works his jaw, swallowing hard. He won’t meet her eyes. “Because of my boss.”

Joni blinks at him. “Your boss?” Blinks at him again. “What? At work?” He manages a chuckle. “Yes, Yoba, sorry, of course at work.”

“It’s okay, it’s okay.”

“I guess you just…I guess you don’t really talk about work. I don’t think you’ve ever talked about work. I always thought…”

“That I didn’t want to hurt you? By talking about it?”

Joni sits a little back, pulling her legs crossed close to her body. That luxurious duvet he’d bought her crumpled like a nest around them. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“That’s not it.” Dread has started to crawl up inside her again. She’s scrambling, trying to figure out what he could even be trying to tell her. But it’s too early, she’s working on too little sleep.

“We slept together.”

Her thoughts come screeching to a halt. The room goes still. So quiet they can hear each other breathing. “Your boss?”

He nods, then seems suddenly to realize what he’s said. Quickly amends. “Not when we were together. Never, never. I would _never _do that to you.”

“Okay.”

“We fucked once before I even knew you really.”

Joni frowns. She hates this, hates the way her memories are suddenly reordering themselves, making space for this new revelation. “In Pelican Town?”

He shakes his head. “No. I was at a work conference and-“

“The first snow. During the first snow right?” He looks at her, confused. Joni shakes her head. “I…I remember. I was with Leah. At Pierre’s.” She smiles to herself. She can almost smell the warm, dry scent of that shop. Her heart aches. “We watched the first snow. Abigail told me you were at some hotshot tech conference.” Joni smiles a little, remembering. “I figured you were way out of my league then.”

Sebastian manages a laugh. “Holy shit, if you had any idea how unbelievably stupid what you just said is.” She knocks him playfully on the arm, but then he’s frowning again. “You’re right though. That is where I met her. She offered me a job, sort of, and we fucked…sort of.”

“Sort of?”

He scrapes his fingers through his hair. “I was thinking about you, actually, and I couldn’t get it up.”

Now it’s Joni’s turn to laugh. “So glad to be the reason you can’t get hard, Sebastian.”

He reaches out to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear, laughing softly. “You know that’s not what I mean.”

She leans into his touch. “I know, but…I guess I’m not really following. What does that have to do with anything now?”

“She’s my boss now and she seems to think…” He bites at his lip. “I don’t know, I don’t know, but she won’t leave me alone. I told her about you. I told her that…I’m not interested, but…it’s so complicated.”

“Like she’s trying to be with you?”

“I don’t know.” He shakes his head. “Be with me, fuck me. It’s really fucking complicated.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

“It is though. And now…I think she’s gonna fire me if I don’t…” He scowls, then looks back at her. “Well, I’m not going to, so…I guess it’s just a matter of time.”

Joni tries to imagine what this woman looks like, but her brain fails her. It doesn’t matter anyway, even though she can barely process what he’s telling her. She looks up at him, sees a desperation in his eyes that she never thought she’d see on him and reaches out to grab his hand. “So quit.”

His eyes widen. “And then what?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. And then we figure it out. You move in here or something. We make it work.”

He shakes his head. “This is my dream.”

“Maybe it’s not anymore.”

“No, it _is._” But his voice wavers. “And even if it wasn’t. I’m a grown man. I need to be responsible.” He glances down at the duvet, rolls the soft cotton between his fingertips. “I want to be able to provide for you.”

She pulls away from him. “I don’t need you to.”

“I know.” He frowns. “But I want to. I want you to give you the life that you’ve always dreamed of.” She doesn’t know how to tell him that she has that life, maybe because she’s only just not, in this moment, realized it. But she’s about to open her mouth and try when she notices that he’s crying. Big, wet tears rolling down his cheeks.

“_Sebastian._” She cups his face.

He holds her hands there. His voice comes out rough, strained. “I wanna make you breakfast. A big breakfast. I want to sit in this apartment with Goose on my lap and eat with you and pretend like we’re in the farmhouse. Like we never left.”

“Okay.” She reaches up to wipe a tear from his cheek. “Okay.” And then. “You’re not failing, you know.” He looks up at her. “No matter what you do, you’re not failing. No to me. Not to anyone that matters.” She takes a risk because she knows how heavy grief sits in your stomach, how long it travels with you. “Not to your dad either.”

He looks up at her. His eyes wide and so incredibly full of pain, and then he descends on her, rocking her backward, crawling up her body. “There has never been,” he kisses her, “and never will be,” lips dragging down her neck, hands roaming her thighs, “a woman like you.” He pulls away, looking hard at her. She can feel his fingers shaking on the skin of her thighs. “I love you, I love you so much I don’t even…I don’t even know how to tell you.”

She leans forward, pulling herself out of his grip. “I love you.” She kisses the corner of his mouth. “Let me show you how much.”

Joni starts slow. Kisses the tattoos across his chest, kisses softly, gently, down his body. His muscles shiver with each new touch, like he’s being touched for the first time. She’s not sure she’s ever done this. Not quite like this. He’s usually the one who lays her out, who takes his time. She should have done this a _long_ time ago.

She rolls her fingers down his ribs, tracing that path with her tongue. She swipes her lips along the petals of those peonies he’d gotten so long ago, holding his hips when he shudders against her touch. Joni walks her fingers down, cupping his balls, rubbing the spot between them, rolling them one by one along her palm. Sebastian groans, his muscles unclenching. His fingers find her, wind into her hair. She kisses lower until she finds the trail of dark hair that starts beneath his bellybutton and follows it down. His cock is hard and hot in her grip, so thick she can’t close her hand around it. She pumps once, then twice and listens to the way his breathing has started to go ragged.

Joni looks up at him only when she reaches his cock. He’s watching her intently, bottom lip caught roughly in his teeth. She kisses the top of his cock and his whole body lurches. He throws his head back. “Yoba, Joni, you’re gonna kill me.” She takes just the head between her lips, swirling her tongue around it. “Gonna kill me.” He trails off, hands finding her hair again. She looks up at him one more time, then takes all of him into her throat. Her name is like a chant, echoing in the room.

“I want you to let me handle this.” He says it as he’s pulling his shirt on. His voice serious and stoic again. Leah’s home. Joni can hear her fussing in the kitchen.

“Sebastian.” Joni’s still in bed, sitting up and watching him, clothed only in a pair of panties. Her nipples are puffy and red, swollen from his attention. He’d paid her blowjob back in kind, letting her grind against his hand until she came so forcefully that he’d had to hold her thighs to keep them from shaking. But now, the room feels cold. Dread settles again inside of her. “Sebastian, you have to let me in.”

“I will, I _am, _but please, I want you to let me handle it. I haven’t decided how yet, but…it needs to be me. I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you everything, I just…do you trust me to handle this?”

She hesitates, looking out her windows at the late afternoon sun. A simmering blue gold of a bright winter day. And then back at him. The sun at his back throwing the hard lines of his body into sharp relief. His olive skin shimmering like a Greek statue “Yeah. Yeah, of course I do.”

He smiles, relief clear on his face. And she can feel it too, the room warm all over again.. “I meant what I said.”

“About what?”

“There really is no one like you.” He leans down to kiss her. She lets him pull her up, lets him take her tight in his arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3


	35. Cloudless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian pieces some of his memories together and realizes that the Valley is very small indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys so much for being patient! I hope to be updating a little more frequently now, but will definitely be back to my usual clip by December at the latest.

Sebastian knows it was the summertime, the salty, warm spray he remembers coming in off the side of the boat makes him sure, but that’s as much as his faint memories give him for context. He’s thinking about it again because he’s hunkered himself down in the meeting room to try and work out some code by hand and the fish keep frowning at him. Or maybe Sebastian’s projecting this time, because he thought it would feel better to commandeer this spot in Marianne’s kingdom, but it just feels petty. Probably because no one’s even here to see it.

Sebastian leans back and stretches. His neck pops and he flinches at the sound. Too many nights bent over his computer, too much work even with Joni as an extremely appealing distraction. Marianne’s gone, Aaron too. She and the whole marketing team have gone off to the Fern Islands for some sort of PR something that Sebastian had only been half-listening to during their last meeting.

Doesn’t seem to be going all that well, truth be told. Aaron called him Thursday in the middle of the night, sounding weirdly out of breath, to tell him that he’d rather die in a snowdrift than spend even another second at this tiki bar with Marianne.

The office is nice though. The tempo seems a little smoother with her gone, like everybody’s taken a big, deep breath. Building included. And Sebastian’s gotten some work done for once, even had time to go across town to get lunch with Joni. They’d eaten falafels from a corner cart, sitting quietly side by side on a retaining wall, watching the freight ships cut through the ice in the harbor, their breath billowing out in front of them. 

That night with Elliot has started to feel like a bad dream and he’s mostly shaken it off, even if there’s still part of him that’s scheming, that isn’t quite done with it yet.

The tank makes a loud gulping sound and Sebastian finds himself looking again at the fish. They’re as depressed as ever and the gaps in his memory itch at the back of his brain. 

He’s surprised when his mother answers. It’s late afternoon by the time he calls and she’d normally be out on a job site. He’d been fully prepared to leave a message, stutters a little when she answers. But it’s winter, he reminds himself, and the work slows in winter. He remembers his mom camping out in their garage for most of the cold months, tinkering with her woodwork. When he left college and came crawling back to the Valley, they’d tinker out there together. He on his bike, she on her projects. A comfortable silence falling between them, the space heater chugging away in the corner. It disturbs him a little how the Valley’s rhythm isn’t second nature anymore, but he doesn’t have time to parse it out before his mother is whistling in his ear. “Hello, son of mine?”

“Shit, hey mom sorry.”

“You rang?”

“Yeah,” Sebastian clicks his pen closed, “listen, I got a weird question that I’m hoping you can help me with.”

“I’m doing fine, thanks for asking.”

“Fuck, sorry I-“

“Don’t worry about it,” she interrupts, “you’re busy, I’m busy. Just do your poor mother a favor and call me more than once a month.”

“I promise.”

He hears Robin laugh over the line. “Sure, sure. So, what’s your big question huh?” He imagines her on the kitchen phone, still in her bathrobe, the ice in kaleidoscope patterns on the window panes. His heart aches.

“Did I know Joni’s grandfather?”

His mother laughs again. “Everybody knew Alexander, Sebby.”

“No, I know, I just…did I ever like…I don’t know, spend some time over there or something?” He brushes his hair off his forehead. “I’ve just been, I don’t know, I’ve had these little memories. Trying to put some shape to ‘em.”

When Robin speaks again, she sounds almost wistful. “How funny. I was just thinking about that the other day. I always wondered if you remembered that summer.”

Summer of 1974. That’s what his mother told him. And the year, like a magic word, unlocks a flood of memories. He can hear the dizzying banjo of the Captain Kangaroo theme song his mother put on the tv in the morning, just to fill the silence, can feel the itch of those terrible plaid bell-bottoms his mom made him wear for class pictures.

He was ten that summer. Knock-kneed and short for his age. Particular and grim. And, Yoba, was that summer hot. So muggy that insides of windows steamed up. The cicadas rose from the ground like locusts, screaming night and day. It was almost two years after his dad died and each day was somehow worse than the last.

Sebastian packs his notebook into his messenger bag and swings it over his shoulder. He heads into the elevator and finds it strangely empty. His thoughts bounce around on the mirrored insides and by the time he reaches the airy lobby of his building, they’re forming something he can recognize.

He remembers that first day pretty clearly now, if only because he’d been a little terrified. Funny how some things don’t change. Sebastian smiles at the barista behind the counter, tips her a five when she hands him her coffee. He rolls his neck again and takes a fortifying sip before heading back to the elevator. Robin had just gotten the truck she has now. Bought it used and probably, now that Sebastian’s old enough to know better, with the kind of high-interest loan that sinks most people. She was trying to start her carpentry business, would tell him about it to fill in the bottomless silence that sat at their third chair during the dinner. She was still working at that diner two towns over. Sometimes nights, sometimes mornings, and now he knows she was probably picking up extra shifts to keep the mortgage paid. That house the very last tangible thing either of them had of his dad. She probably wasn’t getting much sleep. He can’t really imagine it now, that kind of grit.

He definitely hadn’t been able to understand it then, remembers feeling distinctly like he was being brushed off when Robin told him he was going to spend the day on the farm. He’d feigned anger about it, but, in reality, he was a little relieved. That house had started to feel as final and as quiet as the gravestone he and his mother visited every Saturday. Maybe more so. At least his father still lived at the gravestone.

But Sebastian remembers all that anger and all that relief vanishing the moment he set foot on the farm, Alexander waiting for him by the mailbox. He was the tallest man Sebastian had ever seen. Wiry and tanned, his skin a little leathery. He had big hands with knobby knuckles, his nails caked with dirt. Dirt too on his worn jeans, his shirt patched in a few places, rolled up to the elbows. He looked serious too, even as he pulled Robin into a tight hug. But as his mother thanked Alexander profusely for watching Sebastian for a day, the old man glanced over and winked at him.

“We’re gonna have fun,” he told Sebastian as they watched his mother pull out of the drive, kicking up dirt with her tires, “but first we’re gonna work.”

The work had been fileting fish. A whole bucket of them. They’d crouched at the bottom step of the porch where Alexander laid out an old, stained tarp, kept same from the breeze with mason jars. He’d entrusted Sebastian with a paring knife so sharp it glinted in the sunlight and Sebastian had puffed out his chest, feeling suddenly important. The feeling was an echo tinged in grief. His father had given him his first hunting rifle only a few months before his death. It had been collecting dust since the funeral and Sebastian nearly mentioned it. But Alexander was already making quick work of his first fish, telling Sebastian to pay close attention, that the knife needed to slip under the scales just so.

What Sebastian remembers most, not that he’s thinking about it, was the way Alexander talked about his dad. Not at all like the rest of the town did. With their sad eyes and the pitying lilt to their voices. The two of them had started preparing the mason jars for pickling when he did it that first time, just mentioning him off hand. “You know your pops loved my pickled fish.” Sebastian remembers freezing, eyes going wide, like just the mention of his dad was a cue. Like he was supposed to start crying or start…something. But Alexander just carried on, stuffing the filets into the jars. “Swore it was a crime to preserve fish in anything but olive oil, the old Greek, but he always cleaned me out whenever he and your mom came for a visit.”

“My dad’s dead,” Sebastian said it with a huff, then waited. That usually got some kind of reaction out of the grownups and he was just starting to learn that acting out could soothe some of the roiling pain inside of him.

But Alexander only patted him on the back. “He sure is and ain’t that a shame.”

It had been a shock at first and Sebastian remembers looking indignantly over at him. But there was something nice about it. That he wasn’t using his baby voice, that he wasn’t trying to soothe him. Sebastian remembers kicking up dirt with his sneakers, stuffing his little hands into the pockets of his worn jeans. “It sucks.”

Alexander stood with a grunt, wiping dirt from his jeans with his hands. “I’ll bet. Bet it hurts like hell too. But you’ll be alright.”

Sebastian remembers being skeptical of that, but on the way home he’d talked his mother’s ear off. About what they’d done, what Alexander had taught him. More animated than he’d been maybe in his entire life. He remembers Robin on the phone for a while that night, remembers her coming into his bedroom and telling him that he was going to start going to Alexander’s during the say all the time now.

The next morning, Joni’s grandpa told Sebastian to call him Alexi. Said it with a wink that made Sebastian think most people didn’t get to.

Sebastian drains his coffee and pulls his coat on. He’d forgotten so much about that time. Grief wiped it clean and now that he has it back, he feels the loss of those memories. It’s a chilled feeling. He looks out his office window onto the icy harbor. It’s brutally cold tonight, but there’s still no snow. Just blank, dark sky. Unnaturally clear. The darkness in the city feels oppressive in ways he never knew before he moved here. Night in the Valley is infinite, stars beckoning outward, toward some unseen distance. Full of potential. His memories drift along as he walks down the darkened halls of his office.

He’d only cried once at Alexi’s house. Right at the cusp of fall when the apples were starting to get heavy on their branches and the air would grow colder in the afternoons. They’d been heading back up from the greenhouse when the old man slipped up. He’d grunted then said, nodding toward the driveway, “well, let’s get you back to your dad now.” He must have realized his mistake immediately, because Sebastian remembers a tense hand on his back, but the damage was done. Sebastian started to bawl, running toward the house like a bird loosed from a cage, Alexi hot on his trail.

Sebastian remembers wiping his tears, lividly embarrassed, but unable to stem the tide. Emotions too big for his little body. He’d spun away from Alexi’s attempts to comfort him, careening around the front room like a little animal, only stopping when he hit his knee hard on the fireplace. The pain jolted him out of his crying and that’s when he’d seen the picture.

Sebastian lights a cigarette as he heads into the night, slipping through the glass doors of his office. He can still see that picture just as clear as day, surprised he hasn’t remembered it sooner.

It was a woman. The photo framed and sitting on the mantle. And he’d been so surprised that he’d been coming over for all these months and never once noticed that he’d blinked up at Alexi and asked who it was. 

“That’s my daughter.” He told Sebastian, looking long and hard at the photograph. “My only kid.”

“Where is she?” Sebastian asked and he remembers so clearly the way Alexi had paused, the way his breath seemed to take a hundred years.

“She’s everywhere now.” 

The memory startles him. Because now it’s so clear. Because Joni could have come from her rib, the way she looks just like her. Big toothy smile. Full lips. A galaxy of freckles and wild, tawny hair. And in the picture, he remembers now, Joni’s mother had a garden of flowers woven into her hair. A ring of them atop her head.

And then, after all those forgotten years, Sebastian finally understands what Alexi meant when she said that Joni’s mother was everywhere. And now he knows why he never saw Joni. Not even once all that summer. Because she and her father had already had the worst thing happen to them. That darkness had already been conjured and he’d been spending his days at the ground zero of the rest of Joni’s life. It feels huge on his shoulders.

Sebastian lights a second cigarette, feeling a little light-headed, and debates briefly whether or not he should call a cab. That tight, precarious feeling rises up in him again, like it might be the last time he’ll be able to afford one. His job more like something he’s ruined with each passing day. But that’s neither here nor there because, on this icy evening, the only thoughts that stick are of Joni. Little Joni.

He’s never seen a picture of her as a child, but imagines her big eyes and big lips would have looked almost alien on her face before she grew into them. Imagines she’d still have all those freckles, maybe more from summers spent out in the sun, from her hippy parents’ violent distrust of something as corporate as sunscreen. He imagines that her soft curls would have been even wilder as a child. And as he’s imagining her as a little ray of sunshine, he remembers that she too had her life bisected that year. Thrown forever off course. Maybe toward him. That sullen kid with the scrapped knees in the summer of 1974.

She was probably already gone that summer, had probably left the valley indefinitely, grief following like a loyal dog, like a beast, behind her. Not to return until nearly twenty years later, stumbling off that bus.

It means her mother died in 1973. Or close to it. The same year his father died. Sebastian frowns at the realization. He has the sudden jolting memory of sitting across from Emily in the Saloon their senior year of high school, listening to her drone on and on about numerology, about the cosmic significance of numbers. He has the strongest urge to call her from the nearest pay phone because he’s realizing now how all of this has clicked. How their deaths lined up so neatly, how Joni had fled the valley with her father, how Alexi, surely bowed in grief for the death of his only child, had opened his home to a little sullen kid who’d just had the rug pulled out from under him. Generous. How hugely generous.

Gratitude rushes up inside of him. Pure and almost painful. And the world feels suddenly unmoored. Free and yet so densely connected. His job fades into the backdrop. It doesn’t matter, it does not fucking matter. Because he can smell the olives his father used to put out on the table before dinner and the sharp white vinegar Alexi used to pickle fish. And he smells flowers. Joni’s flowers. The scent always lingering on her skin, in her hair. Her mother must have smelled like that. Had to have.

Sebastian swats at his face, drawn out of his thoughts by cold wetness on his cheeks. He looks up and realizes that it’s started to snow. His first winter in Zuzu all the snow had seemed grey, but now it’s beautiful. Soft and white like it’s come straight from the Valley. He lets it fall on his lashes, closes his eyes to let the perfect stillness of the winter night envelop him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading <3. Your comments and kudos are everything to me!


	36. First Snow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian and Joni try to capture a bit of the Valley and Sebastian comes clean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright guys, this is a little interlude, but I promise the next few chapters are gonna be heavy, heavy with plot.

Joni’s drifting off on the couch when the phone rings and, at first, she doesn’t budge. She’s under two quilts, the radiator clanking warmly a few feet away and Martha Stewart’s on tv demonstrating how to _properly _spike eggnog.

Joni’s feet hurt. Her hips too. She’d put in a few extra hours at the bookstore, helping Lydia with the new stock. Hours of up and down on ladders, winding through the store’s tall, slightly precarious shelves. Cookbooks mostly. Cookies and candies and hearty fruit pies. She’d flipped through a couple on her break, suddenly ravenous for one of Evelyn’s cakes, for some of Demetrius’ crumble. There’d been boxes and boxes of new romance too. Their glossy red and gold covers smooth under her fingers, titles like _A Winter Star Promise _and _Marry Me at Winter Star. _Hokey, sure, but sort of pleasant. Sort of dreamy.

The phone rings again and Joni frowns, craning her neck over the side of the couch to glance at it. When she settles back, Goose is glaring at her with one eye from his spot on her belly. She huffs, then shoes him off her, rising to her feet.

Sebastian doesn’t even say hello. “Go look outside.”

She wipes at her eyes. “What?” Her neck makes a sort of creaky sound when she rocks it side to side. It had been afternoon when she first plopped down on the couch, the apartment full of light, but now the sun has sunk into the harbor and Joni finds herself standing in half-darkness, the light from the tv casting strange shadows on the wall. “Why?”

“Just go look outside.” Sebastian sounds almost giddy and Joni hoists the receiver onto her hip and pads toward the windows.  
A light dusting of snow has accumulated on the roofs below and soft flakes fall in the darkened sky. “It’s snowing.”

“Yes!”

She frowns. “It’s…um, is there something else?”

She hears him groan over the phone. “Oh come on!”

“What!?” She laughs, smoothing her hair off her face. His voice is so nice to listen to, even over the phone. That twang that he had tried so hard to bury when they lived in the Valley has come back full force in Zuzu, like he can’t hold it in anymore.

“It’s first snow, Joni! First snow is important!”

Joni smiles, cradling the phone closer to her cheek. “That might be the most down-home thing you’ve ever said to me.”

She can almost hear his smile. “Come over.”

“What?” She checks her watch. It’s nine pm. “Right now?”

“Why not? We should celebrate.” She hears him fussing with something over the line. “Is Leah home?”

Joni glances toward the empty kitchen. “At work.”

“Too bad. I can call you a cab. Bring something sweet.”

She gets the cake from the fancy corner store a block from his apartment. It’s all glass, sparklingly clean without a trace of that distinctive lemon-y floor cleaner scent that every other bodega in town has. She buys a vanilla cake because it’s white, seems wintry enough. But as she holds it in her hands, waiting in line for the register, all she can think about are Evelyn’s cakes. Last winter she made a ginger cake so dense with spices it burned at the back of your throat, a red velvet cake with the most heavenly buttercream she’d ever tasted in her life. But the one Joni wants most as she stands in line, watching the snow pile on the sidewalk outside, is the one Evelyn makes at the height of summer. A vanilla cake with a fluffy whipped frosting filled to bursting with lemon curd and whatever fresh berries were growing out in the publics gardens. She’d keep it cold and on the hottest days of summer, it tasted like respite, like joy. And suddenly all Joni wants in the whole world is to be sunning her legs on the front porch, watching as bees float lazily by, sprays of wildflowers blowing softly in the warm wind. Her heart aches and the bodega feels suddenly freezing and barren. She shivers. 

Joni ducks out of line and goes hunting for produce. She winds through a couple aisles of wine, past a display of gluten-free cookies, until she finds a dinky stand in the back, heavy with limp looking greens. Joni spots a carton of anemic raspberries and turns it around in her hand. Seven dollars. She scoffs. Come June she could get whole crates of raspberries from Pierre’s for that much. She can almost smell their light scent, taste their perfect sour sweetness on her tongue. The bell dings above the door and Joni’s eyes fly open. She hadn’t even realized they’d been closed. The linoleum under her feet is cold and dirty, rivulets of wet mud, slush.

Sebastian buzzes Joni into his apartment and when she slips inside, she finds him on the phone. The lights are a little low, just the lamps he brought from home on. They fill the living room with golden light. He’s lit a couple candles on the coffee table and, in the dim light, the windows are vast and clear, the snow falling around them like a shaken snow globe.

Joni sets the cake box down on the phone table and wraps her arms around Sebastian’s waist. He smells like cigarettes, like himself. She breathes him in and sighs a hello into his chest. He runs his fingers through her hair and switches the phone to his other ear. “Yeah, yeah.” He feigns a cough. “I have no idea, Tom, must’ve picked up it on the train. You know how it is.” Another cough. “Yeah, don’t bother Marianne about it. She’s busy enough on the trip.” A pause. “Yeah, thanks so much, Tom. Much appreciated. Yep. Yep. Will do. Buh-bye.” He sets the phone back in the receiver and wraps his arms around her. “Hey.” Sebastian presses a kiss to her hairline.

“Hey.” Joni raises an eyebrow. That blurry image rises again in Joni’s mind. The composite of the woman who is now his boss. It’s still so hard to imagine her, to imagine all the things he’s told her about what she’s done. “Everything alright?” 

“She’s out of town.” And she can hear the relief in his voice even as he holds her tighter to him. “But I’m not going in tomorrow.”

Joni frowns. “Why not?”

Sebastian pulls away from her, grinning. “Because we have to celebrate first snow.”

“Pasta water should be like seawater.” Joni watches as Sebastian pours salt into his palm, watches him scatter in into the tall pot of water. “If you think you’ve added enough,” he glances over at her, “add more.”

Joni smiles, then takes a sip from her bottle of beer. She’s perched on one of his dining room chairs, legs crossed on the seat, watching him from under her lashes. “Who taught you that?” Sebastian’s set a little bowl of olives out on the table and she’s been picking through them as he cooks.

“Demetrius.”

Joni pops an olive into her mouth, likes the saltwater taste. “Ah, of course.” Sebastian grins sidelong at her. “So what are you making me, anyway?”

“Pasta aglio e olio.” He waggles his eyebrows at her, putting on a surprisingly convincing Italian accent. “Extra special.”

“What’s special about it?

“Everything.” Sebastian smiles softly to himself then looks over at Joni with a wink. “It is, perhaps, the most sensual pasta dish of all time.”

Joni snort. “Now I _know _Demetrius didn’t tell you that.”

Sebastian chuckles. He crouches with a grunt and rummages in the cabinet under his sink, pulling out a heavy, wooden cutting board. It looks old, like it might have come from Robin’s house. “You’re right, he didn’t. My dad did.”

Joni pauses, olive between her fingers, frozen on the way to her mouth. But Sebastian hasn’t noticed and as she studies his face, she can see that the grief to expects to see is nowhere to be found. Just an ease that she’s not sure she’s ever seen on him. Sebastian shrugs, almost sheepish. “It’s Italian, actually. Go figure. But my dad used to make it for my mom. Sometimes. He used to tell me it was for the special people in your life.” He winks. “Guess that’s you.”

Joni tries to hide her blush, taking a long pull from her beer. “Corny.”

Sebastian just laughs. He’s started to peel a pile of garlic, his nimble fingers making quick work of it. She watches as he arranges the peeled cloves, watches as he pulls a knife from the drawer by the sink. The snow has started falling harder now, big, white flakes that stick to the window panes. “You have to cut the garlic very thin.” Sebastian takes his tongue in his teeth, brow furrowed in concentration. He’s slicing the cloves so thinly, they’re almost translucent. Olive oil bubbles in a pan beside the roiling pasta water. Joni’s never smelled olive oil quite like this. Quite so rich, with a kick of spice at the tail end. “Very, very thin.” Joni nods and gets up from her seat, plopping a final olive into her mouth. She slides past him, running her fingers along the expanse of his back as she goes. The countertop is cool against her thighs when she hoists herself up onto it. Sebastian’s knife slows as he drags his gaze up her legs. When he catches her looking, he averts his eyes, just the faintest blush blooming on his cheeks.

Joni brushes her socked foot against his side. “You’re allowed to leer.”

Sebastian raises an eyebrow. “Oh am I now?”

She drags her foot a little higher. “I think you’ve earned it.” Sebastian grins, then dips down and presses a kiss to her knee, eyes never leaving her face.

Joni’s not sure exactly why she likes the water as much as she does. Doesn’t know why it calls her. But she _does _know why she likes skinny dipping, especially up here under the exposed atrium glass of Sebastian’s pool. Because that hunger she sees in Sebastian’s eyes when she slips out of her jeans goes straight to her gut. That feral energy, just barely contained, is something she’ll never get tired of. She turns her back to him, looks out at the city glittering before her. The snow has turned to tall tops of buildings into mountainous peaks, string lights blinking in the distance like little, colored stars. The air is cool on her bare skin, but the water in the pool is steaming.

She hears Sebastian unzip his pants, every sound echoing in the empty room. “We should probably buy suits.” His jeans fall with a whomp on the tile floor.

Joni looks over her shoulder at him. He’s wrestling off his shirt, revealing the smooth expanse of his muscled skin, all his scratchy tattoos. She wants to trace them with her tongue, with the pads of her fingers. “What for?” Sebastian grins at her, mischief dancing in his eyes. And then he’s advancing, so quickly she doesn’t even have time to register it before he’s hauling her up by her waist, dropping her onto a nearby wicker lounge. Joni lets her hair splay out around her head, lays back, her heart pounding in her chest. Every nerve is on fire and she runs her hand slowly down her bare belly, anticipating his touch. Sebastian drags one of the tables across the tile, pushing it in front of the door. When he turns back to face her, the hunger she’d seen in his eyes is now written on every muscle in this body. Joni lets her legs fall open. An invitation. The lounge creaks when he sits down on the edge of it. She watches him like a dream as he lifts her ankle and kisses the ball of it. Then, with no warning, he pulls her down the lounge, settling between her legs. She holds her breath, he watches her do it, moving slowly down, down. She exhales when he presses that first kiss along the seam of her.

“I want you to know that you can tell me anything.” She says it offhand, just the sort of thing that comes to mind in those hazy moments after she cums. They’re wrapped in each other’s arms, still naked. Sebastian’s cum sticky between her thighs. She doesn’t mean anything by it, really, but Sebastian tenses. His eyes narrow and he recoils from where he’s touching her. The air slows to a stop around them.

“Where is this coming from?”

“I just think…I don’t know. I just…I don’t why I said that, actually, but, um,” she cocks her head at him, trying to meet his eyes, “you seem…” He tries to turn his head further away from her, but she stops him, hand on his cheek. His skin is cold now. “Sebastian. What’s going on?” 

“Nothing.” But then he shakes his head, chewing his lip. “No, I…” He sighs. “I’ve been having a hard time.”

“Yeah, I…” Joni sits back a little, her hands almost demurely in her lap. “I think I knew that. I don’t know, I just…”

He glances up at her. “Yeah, I figured I couldn’t hide it from you. Especially now that you’re…”

“That I’m what?”

He pats her knee, then squeezes. “You seem like you’re doing really good.”

Joni sits up a little straighter, rolls her shoulders. “Yeah, I mean, I am. I am doing…good.”

Sebastian manages a weak chuckle. “You are. And I’m…” He sighs heavily. “I don’t know what I am.”

“Is this about something at work?” He half nods, looking away again. “Okay…what else is it about?”

His adam’s apple bobs in his throat. “I saw Elliot.”

At first, Joni doesn’t react. Her brain has slowed to a stop. Then, in inches, she raises her hands to cover her bare chest. It’s instinctual. The feeling’s almost like nausea, exposing. “You saw him.” Sebastian nods. Joni’s voice cracks and he squeezes her knee again. “Where did you see him?”

“I…well, I more than saw him.”

“What does that mean?” Joni pulls away from him. “What the fuck does that mean?”

Sebastian finally locks eyes with her again. Those cool eyes of his are molten now. Filled with fear, maybe, with regret. “I…threatened him.”

“Are you kidding me?” Joni wishes she had her clothes. Because right now she feels tiny and cold and all alone even though Sebastian is so close she can feel his heat.

Sebastian winces. “Well, it wasn’t quite…I didn’t quite-“

“You _threatened _him!?” Sebastian says nothing, eyes pleading. Joni stands, darting for her clothes.

Sebastian seems stunned, but recovers quickly, reaching out for her. Joni. twists easily out of his grip. “Wait, wait, please. Joni. _Please.” _

“I can’t believe you.” Joni pulls her jeans violently up her legs. “I can’t fucking believe that you would do something like that.”

“I wanted to protect you!” They both freeze. His shout echoes around the atrium. Sebastian looks horrified, hand hovering over his mouth, eyes wider than she’s ever seen on him. He blinks once, twice, then looks up pleading at her. “He deserved to be punished.”

There’s something about the way he’s kneeling on the tile, his cock flaccid against his thigh, that makes him look small, and it settles her some. The room comes back into view and the anger and the fear that was boiling up inside of her recedes. “So what? You just thought you would do it yourself.”

He stands up, one hand resting sheepishly over his cock. Joni hands him his jeans. He looks down as he slides them back on. “Yes, actually. But I…didn’t end up doing anything. I let him go.”

“Did he call the police?”

Sebastian shrugs. “I don’t think so.”

“When did this happen?”

“Last week.”

She exhales. He hadn’t been keeping it from her long. “Sebastian.” She reaches out to brush his damp curls from his forehead. He looks stunned, staring at her hand. “He could hurt me.”

Sebastian’s whole body tenses. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, don’t provoke him. _Please. _Because he’s not going to come after you. But he could come after me.”

“I won’t let him.”

“It’s not up to you.” He swallows hard. “It’s safer for me to lay low okay? It’s safer for me to fade away for him.”

“He wrote a _book _about you.” It lands easier than she expects it to, easier than it would have even a month before.

“I know.”

He shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have done that. It’s like I went crazy. I…I wanted him to be as afraid as you had been.”

“What would that accomplish?”

He exhales shakily, grimacing. “I don’t know.”

“You have to understand how this is for me.”

He nods, still chewing on his lip. “I want to.” He reaches out slowly, watching to see if she’ll flinch again. She doesn’t and he curls a lock of her hair around his finger. “I want to. That’s why I’m telling you.”

“I love you.” He blinks at her. “I love you and I love that you want to keep me safe. But not like this.”

He nods. “Okay, yeah. Okay.” 

“Besides, Lydia took his book out of the store. So, I don’t even have to see it. I can try to move on too.”

“A lot of bookstores have. Taken it off the shelves, I mean.”

Joni blinks at him. “Really?”

Sebastian shrugs, hands in his pockets. His skin is still slick from the pool and the distilled light that falls on it, makes him shimmer. Joni traces the ink on him. The eye tattooed in the crook of his collarbone, down along the snake entwined with the fox, teeth bared at each other. She finds the peonies’ petals with her fingertips. “Yeah, uh, I’ve checked a couple places. Just some by work. They um, they said it wasn’t selling well.”

Joni brushes his hair back again. “It doesn’t matter.” And she means it, even if she isn’t sure what it means.

“I just…I can protect you, okay? Just let me. Let me make up for all the times I didn’t.”

“Then protect me. But let me be the one who tells you how.”

“Okay.” He nods. “ Okay. I won’t do it again. I promise. I _promise.” _He looks hard at her. “You’re not angry.” It isn’t really a question.

Joni shrugs. “I guess not. Because I get it. I get why you did it. I just…I need you to trust that I can handle my shit, Sebastian.”

“I do,” he bends down to pick up her sweater. He hands it to her, watching as she pulls it over her head. “You’re the most capable woman I know.”

Joni scoffs. “You don’t mean that.”

“I do.” Sebastian frowns. “I’m sorry I brought this up. I feel like I ruined our night.”

“No, I’m glad you told me This is what I want. I want us to be honest. All the time. No matter how painful it is.”

Sebastian looks off toward the still falling snow and winces. .”I knew your grandpa.

Joni frowns, trying to understand the sudden pivot. “Should I be bracing myself for another confession?”

Sebastian laughs. “No, no. I just. We’ve talked about it before. A little. I just wanted you to know. That I knew him. That…I remember him.” A warm feeling has started to spread along her body.

“I think everyone knew him.”

“Yeah, I know, but I spent some time on the farm. When I was a kid. After my dad died. I just…” He smiles absently. “Call me Emily, but I’m sort of starting to think this is meant to be.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys so much for reading <3. I really love this fandom so much and all your kudos and comments mean the absolute world to me.


	37. Boiling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian can’t keep his cool.

It starts with a look. Sebastian catches it even though he isn’t really paying attention and then, all at once, he’s laser-focused. This meeting was called almost as soon as Marianne stepped back into the city. An emergency, fix-this-shit sort of gathering that’s sole purpose, as far as Sebastian can tell, is to draft some kind of mea culpa to save the merger that is now, apparently, dead in the water.

“She lost her shit,” Aaron told him a few minutes before the meeting started, pulling him into an empty office. “Got too drunk and made a complete fucking fool of herself in front of the board of directors. The deal is, as my old man would say, completely fucking FUBAR.” And it felt that way, when they all shuffled inside, Marianne standing at the head of the table, visibly seething.

But even with the promise of a little schadenfreude, Sebastian’s been drifting. Watching the fish mostly, trying to figure out if the sudden rising desire to take a week off in the summer and go fishing down by the South Sea makes him an old man or not. But that look, he can feel its energy, even though it’s not even directed at him. Just a quick glance from Marianne to Aaron, but it’s cutting and Sebastian watches as all the color drains from Aaron’s face. Her secretary has been reading off a list of complaints the board members had faxed over that morning and, with each one, Marianne has gotten stiffer, her eyes a little wilder.

Sebastian’s hackles are raised now too. He drains his coffee and glances around the table. No one else seems to have noticed it. Or they’re doing a real good job of pretending like they haven’t. Sebastian meets Aaron’s eyes, quirking up a single eyebrow. Aaron’s face is devastating. He looks like a kid left a summer camp, a dog stuck in the pound. His eyes are _begging. _And Sebastian can sense that things are crumbling before anyone else in the room, maybe because it’s a feeling he’s known so well for so long.

“The situation was out of my control. And,” Marianne rounds on Aaron, turning her whole body to face him. “The situation was poorly managed. Isn’t that right, Aaron.” He’s white as a sheet now.” I certainly expected better from _you._” She spits it at him. “_Useless. _What’s the point of paying you if all you give me is mediocrity, hmm? If you can’t even handle a simple conference. What use are public relations if our public relations officer is an idiot!” Aaron is perfectly still for a very long time. The whole room is. Even the traffic snaking along the street so far below them seems to slow, the ice on the windows so thick that Sebastian can almost hear it cracking. “Really, you should be ashamed. How could you let something as important as this-“

“Yeah, I’m not really sure why Aaron’s taking the fall for your fuck up.” It’s only when the room falls eerily silent that Sebastian realizes he’s said it out loud. She’s watching him. The whole room is. The tendons in her neck are tight and pulsing and while he knows, somewhere deep down, that he should be backtracking, apologizing, rage has risen up in him. All the veiled threats, all the errant touches. Every single sloppy voicemail she’s left him. The cool darkness of his apartment, the loneliness she’d sowed in him. The way her voice was almost a chirp when she asked him if he’d seen his father die. If he’d watched. This, now, the way Aaron is looking up at her like a dog about to be whupped, is too much. He couldn’t stop himself even if he wanted to. “Honestly, I don’t understand why we’re even having this dumbass meeting. Seems like you’re the one who needs to figure shit out.”

Marianne is calm. The tightly coiled pause of a snake rearing back to bite. “What did you just say to me?”

Sebastian stands before he even knows what he’s really doing, pulling his messenger bag over his shoulder. “I said fuck off, you crazy bitch.” Aaron gapes at him like a fish. They all do. Even Marianne.

He can’t get his hands to stop shaking long enough for him to light a cigarette. And when he finally manages a light, he can’t seem to inhale all that well and it’s then, the grey sky reflecting darkly in his box of an office, that he realizes he might be having an honest to Yoba panic attack. He tries to remember what Joni does when this happens, but can’t. Thinks that maybe he should call her, but he’s shaking too badly to pick up the phone. Sebastian forces air into his lungs and then, like a caged animal, gets up and starts to pace, smoking through half his pack, a haze settling around him. His thoughts are ricocheting so violently around in his head that it might as well be blank. He had no idea what’s about to happen, not a single, solitary clue, but everything he cobbles together fills him with dread.

His office is so still and Sebastian finds that he hates the silence, longs suddenly for the sounds of the world around him. The birds, the rustling of the wind. Anything. And he’s so busy disdaining the terrible, final silence around him that he doesn’t realize, at first, that someone is pounding on his door. Sebastian stops pacing, eyes wide, looking at the door like it might splinter, like it might hurt him. “Open the goddamn door, dipshit.” Sebastian exhales, every muscle in his body releasing. It’s Aaron’s voice through the door. The pounding gets louder, more erratic. “If you’re the captain going down with the ship, I’m the orchestra so let me in!”

Sebastian presses his forehead against the door’s cool surface. His heart has slowed. “That metaphor doesn’t even make sense.”

He hears a groan then two hard raps. “Open the fucking door, asshole.” Sebastian exhales, then turns the knob. Aaron barges in. He looks like shit. His hair askew, shirt untucked, tie tossed over one shoulder. He coughs, waving his hand in front of his face. “Fucking shit, you trying to smoke your own self out?” Sebastian doesn’t answer, just lights another cigarette. His fingers are trembling again. Aaron watches them. His jaw is tight. Then he looks back up, a manic glint in his eyes. “Alright, punk rock, let’s take a walk.”

Aaron coughs his way through two cigarettes. Sebastian’s out, his fingers twitching at his sides. They’ve gone numb. His whole body has gone numb. The snow that had fallen two days ago is covered now in a sheet of ice. The air is so cold it burns his lungs.

They’d crossed the street in silence, wound their way along the sidewalk, until they’d found themselves in the harbor district, surrounded by crab nets and wooden crates. The air smells sharply of fish and guts and rot and that sudden, organic sensory assault feels so good after the recycled air in their office building. They’re both staring out at the water, at the ice cracking under the weight of the fishing boats bobbing in the distance. “You know we’re both fucked, right?”

Sebastian glances over at him. Aaron’s holding himself tightly, his cashmere scarf so bulky he looks like a little kid. Sebastian just shrugs. He isn’t sure if it’s a new, mature calm that’s settled over him or just that old, numb standby, but the panic he’d felt in the office is gone now. “Then we’re fucked.”

Aaron looks up at him. “She might fire you.”

Sebastian almost laughs. “She was already going to.” He runs his hands through his hair, wishing he’d worn gloves. His brain is ticking away now, those sharp gears already grinding a path forward. “You remember when we got lunch a while back? When Joni was in the hospital?”

Aaron scrunches up his face. “Um, maybe? Why?”

“What were you saying about those businesses?” Sebastian tucks his hands into his coat pockets. “You know, the ones poor kids like us were starting.”

Aaron side eyes him. “It would be a lot of work.”

“Mmhmm.”

“I would need a really talented coder.”

“Well, not to brag but…”

Aaron sighs. “It might be the dumbest, stupidest idea I’ve ever had.”

“But you have an idea?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m listening.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3


	38. Pots and Pans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leah comes clean.

Lydia gave her the book at the end of her shift the night before. A slim volume, new enough to have a paperback run, but old enough that the cover was more than a little frayed. Marked up by its last owner. The cover is a pastoral scene that reminds her a little of the farm. Tall grasses swaying at twilight, fireflies bobbing in the pale golden light of the setting sun. It’s a soft, sort of meandering book. A romance set in a time that could be anytime. A rural fantasy filled with lush descriptions of food, of weather that seems to always be beautiful, even when it’s raging. Errant touches, looks of longing across crowded rooms. It’s a little boring, honestly, but wrapped in the duvet Sebastian bought her, listening to the radiator hum beside her, the book has a certain something that keeps her turning the pages. .

Joni adjusts herself in bed, Goose mewls angrily as she jostles him. He trots along the sheets and settles against her side, glancing up at her with one open eye. Joni leans back into her pillows, ruffling the fur behind his ears with her fingers. It’s still snowing, but softer now, just big, white flakes that drift lazily outside her window.

Emily sent her a package a week ago. It had a long, rambling letter about astrology that Joni figures she wasn’t really expecting a response to. It had a pair of hand-knit socks too. So warm and colorful they’d filled Joni with a simmering, easy joy. She’s wearing them now, so enveloped in her own world that she doesn’t hear the soft knock at her door.

Goose raises his head, tail unwinding. The door creaks and soon Leah’s red hair pokes out from the hall. “Hey.”

Joni shuts the book and sits up. “Hey, what’s up?”

Leah chews at her lip. “Are you free?”

Dread settles in Joni. That old, familiar feeling. “Yeah, of course.”

Leah smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “Great, let’s go do something.” 

The train is mostly empty. There only fellow passengers an old woman with her bag of groceries sitting precariously in her lap and a homeless man snoozing on the row of seats beside the conductor’s cabin. He’s wearing an old, frayed army jacket and Joni remembers with a jolt that there is still a war going on. She’d been tossed so completely in the sea of her own life that everything else has slipped away from her. She frowns at the thought.

“It’s over,” Leah says, nodding toward the man, “did you hear?”

‘The war?”

Leah nods. “Couple weeks ago. Heard it on the radio back in the kitchen at work.”

“Who won?”

Leah shrugs. “Dunno. Nobody, I guess.” The train lurches into the station at the next stop. Through the train’s dingy windows, Joni can see that the stop is mostly empty. A vending machine blinks neon, the light spilling half-formed onto the cold concrete. A couple of teenagers lumber onto the train. They’re wrapped in heavy coats and have the guilty, giddy looks of kids ditching school for the first time. One of them fumbles with a cigarette.

It’s an odd time of day, mid-morning, and the temperate has been plummeting since the night before. The train fills with steam at each stop, the dirty puddles on the floor a mess of broken ice and slush. Leah reaches over and pats Joni’s knee and Joni turns to look at her. She looks tired. Deeply, painfully tired. Joni lays her head on Leah’s shoulder and takes her hand. “I missed you.”

Leah squeezes. “We live together, silly.”

“You know what I mean.”

Leah wraps her arm around Joni’s shoulders. “I do.”

They end up at the Zuzu Botanical Gardens. Or maybe they always meant to go there. Joni can’t remember if they’d agreed on a destination when they got on the subway. She doesn’t think so. They just rode the H line to its end and piled out together into the freezing sunshine and there it was in front of them, looking warm and lush and like a whole world away from the city pressing down all around them.

The tickets are cheap, the ancient woman at the ticket booth smiling softly at them as they smooth out the spare dollars crunched at the bottoms of their bags and the pockets of their jeans. It feels, as they head down the tiled hallway, like an alien world. Vast and echoey, mostly empty on this weekday afternoon. They wander first through the tropical room. The humidity filling their lungs, glossy, waxy looking leaves brushing against their skin as they follow the narrow stone trail through the room. Some of the plants are squat but wide, their leaves like tendrils through the underbrush, others tower above them, their leaves as big as awnings. Dark green and shimmering. Dense, colorful flowers poke their heads out of the foliage. Their petals wet and lush, trembling with life. A bird flies overhead, a bright parrot. It lands on the heavy bow of an enormous fiddleleaf fig, watching them as they continue along the garden’s path. Emily loves parrots, used to, when she was tripping, talk about the way their colors blended so seamlessly together. How magic that was, that they could exist at all. It’s a strange thing to think so far away from the Valley. Joni ought to call her. Leah takes Joni’s arm and they continue down, arm in arm.

They grab hotdogs beside the dinky little gift shop at the front of the building. The man at the stand looks dreamily off out at the street, the whole world slowed and quiet here inside the gardens. They head together to back toward the tropical room, settle down on a bench overlooking one of the gardens. Joni eats her hotdog in three bites, wipes mustard from her lip, before cracking open the joja cola she bought. The garden behind the glass is a meadow scene. Swaying grasses and sprays of wildflowers. A few flowering trees twist like they’re frozen in motion, caught in a violent wind. The rest of the garden is placid, serene. Hummingbirds flit busily from wildflower to wildflower and Joni’s chest tightens. It’s not quite as arid back on the farm, but the feeling is the same. Even behind glass she can smell it, hear it, the rhythm of that world imprinted on her brain. It’s strange to see a scene so familiar and hear nothing but silence, just the occasional clacking of shoes on the tile floor and the whirr of the central heating unit. And she’s so focused on the feeling roiling around inside of her that it takes her longer than it should to realize that Leah has started to cry beside her. She’s sniffling, tears sliding quietly down her cheeks, her knuckles white from how hard she’s gripping the bench.

Joni goes rigid, reaches out, then thinks better of it, curling her hand back and holding it to her chest. “Leah, what’s wrong?” Leah just shakes her head, wiping at her cheeks. “Leah, what’s _wrong_?”

“I love you.” Leah’s eyes are owlish when they look at her, wide and rimmed in red. “You’re my best friend in the whole world, you know that right?”

“I…love you too.” Dread rises up inside of her again, familiar and jarring. “I…what is this about?” A woman walks slowly behind their bench, pushing a stroller. The wheels echo. They are otherwise alone, shrouded in quiet.

“I think I hate it here.” Joni swallows hard, watches as Leah’s shoulders slump. “I’ve been doing nothing but working since I got here. Haven’t finished a piece since Pelican Town, have barely started any either. It’s just such bullshit. Such fucking bullshit. Everyone says you have to be in the city to do this shit, but I can barely afford to live and every day I feel more and more claustrophobic.” She sighs heavily and looks back out at the meadow scene. Her neck and chest are flushed the same color as her hair and Joni doesn’t think she’s seen her do that since the morning after Elliot came to the farm. “Rita found a brochure for the artist colony in Pelican Town. It’s filling up now that the war is over. They got a grant, I guess, from the government. A rural arts grant. And she was just,” Leah frowns, “gushing. Fucking gushing. About how beautiful the place is, how nice it must be to have all that time to work, all that space to think.” Her breath rattles when she inhales, her eyes desperate when she looks finally over at Joni. “And it was. It was perfect. And part of me knew that, but I took it so much for granted toward the end. Just wanted to leave when I should have been desperate to stay.”

The floor has started to feel like it’s shifting under Joni’s feet, but she tries to keep her face neutral, keep from getting sick all over the tile floor. “We can figure it out. Nothing is set in stone. We can go wherever we want.”

Leah frowns. “You have a life here.”

“I can have a life anywhere.” But as soon as it’s out of her mouth, she recoils from it. What the hell does she even mean? What are they even talking about here?

“I’ve been working on a project.”

“A project.” Her voice sounds hollow.

“It’s not art, but it’s something…that’s become really important to me.”

Joni turns to face her fully, trying to breathe, trying to keep her thoughts from racing. “Okay.”

“There’s a gallery on the outskirts of town where a lot of artists hang out. Mostly women, mostly queer. They’re all making good work. They’re all really talented.” She frowns again. “They’re all really poor. _We’re _all really poor. And some nights I would just start like cooking, like whipping shit up, you know? With whatever we had. And then I started taking leftover food from the restaurant. And then people started donating.” Leah smiles a little at the memory. “Sebastian donated a couple times.”

Joni goes rigid. “He never told me about that.”

“He didn’t know what it was for. Just slid me a couple twenties when I told him I needed money.” She sighs. “It got bigger and bigger. These weekly dinners for artists. It became a tradition and then it became something more. It’s a lifeline, you know? A way for artists to keep working and to be fed. It’s a way to try and dismantle the fucking bullshit grip rich yuppies have on the art scene in this city, even just a little.”

“It sounds incredible. It sounds…” Joni trails off. She’s trying to figure out where this is going, why this whole conversation has started to sound like one, long apology.

“I can’t keep doing it here though. I can’t afford it.” Joni just stares at her. “It’s becoming something real. Something tangible. And it might even be possible if I go somewhere where the cost of living is a little lower.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means…I don’t know.” She reaches over to take Joni’s hand. “I’m not skipping out on the lease or anything. I just…”

“Are you going back to the Valley?”

Leah looks away, her mouth tight. Joni’s heart is pounding so loudly in her ears now that she can barely hear. “I’ve been talking with Lewis, yeah. He…likes my idea a lot.” Joni chews hard on the inside of her cheek. She’s stiff with emotions. Anger and sorrow and brutal, brutal jealousy. Pride too. A shimmering little nugget of overwhelming pride lodged hard in her chest. “Do you hate me?”

That pulls her out of her thoughts. Joni’s never seen Leah look this sheepish. She squeezes her hand. “Of course not, Yoba, of _course _not.”

Leah nods, but the frown never leaves her face. “Nothing’s set in stone. I mean, it might not even work out. I might not be going anywhere.”

“I know, I know.”

“And even if it comes through, it’s going to be months, Yoba maybe even a year before I’d head out there.”

“Sure, sure okay.” Joni squeezes again, trying to memorize the feeling of Leah’s hand in hers.

The peonies are dead. Most of them at least. Their petals limp, a translucent, deadened orange. Joni notices right away when they shuffle back into the apartment, the evening light casting a cold shadow over the living room. She crouches beside the pots, pulling her gloves roughly off her hands. Their stems are cold to the touch. The heat must have gone out while they were away. It’s been doing that. Fluctuating. Unreliable. Their delicate roots, already pulled so roughly out of their time and place couldn’t take it. Leah flips on the light, barely stifling a gasp. “Oh, Yoba, fuck that.”

Joni lets her bag fall with a heavy thunk to the ground. “Yeah.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3. You guys really give me life.


	39. Watershed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything comes to a head

It’s funny, his indecision. Funny how he’s packed up half his office and funny how he’s stopped. How the drawers are open, mostly empty. How he’s put his coat on twice, taken it off three times. It feels like there’s no heat in the office and Sebastian wonders, a little hysterically, if Marianne’s turned it off just to spite all of them.

He and Aaron had spent a couple hours just wandering the harbor, talking, strategizing until their fingers went numb. They’d mapped out everything and decided nothing and now Sebastian is feeling the weight of the paths they haven’t figured out whether or not to take. He’d tried to call Joni, but he’d gotten the voicemail at their apartment, hadn’t bothered to leave a message. It’s hard to swallow. His body is so tight that every muscle feels locked in place, like he’ll never move again. And yet his blood is buzzing, his heart pounding so hard and fast that his fingers rattle when he sets them on his desk. His mind is racing so quickly that when he hears the door to his office creak open, he doesn’t even bother lifting his head. “I know, man, I know, okay?”

“And what do you know?” Her voice cuts through him and he is frozen again. He can only listen helplessly as her heels clack against the concrete toward him. “Sebastian.” She’s so close he can feel her breath on his back. He shudders when she lays her hands on his shoulders, but doesn’t resist when she turns him slowly to face her. Her hair is a little disheveled, like she’s been running her fingers through it, but every other part of her is crisp and pressed like she just walked out of a dry-cleaner. “That was quite the stunt.” Sebastian has thought of a hundred things he wanted to say to her. Muttered them to himself as he packed, ran them over and over in his head. But now, with her standing there in front of him, he finds he has nothing to say. She clicks her tongue on her teeth. “Quite the stunt you pulled back there.” She reaches up and tucks an errant curl behind his ear. He’s too frozen to flinch. “You’re lucky you’re so cute.” And then she gets up on her tiptoes and she starts to kiss him. She kisses him like she loves him, like she _wants _him. Like he’s all she can think about. She kisses him like he’s kissing her back. Sebastian balls his hands into fists. Marianne pulls at his shirt, pulls it out from where he’s tucked it in. Her fingers are cold against his bare skin. She tugs his belt undone so hard Sebastian’s hips rock forward. Bile sits dangerously at the base of his throat. He feels like a little boy. “Please stop.” Sounds like one too. If she hears him, Marianne gives him no indication that she has, wrenching his fly down. “Stop, _stop._” He wrenches her hands off him. “Fucking stop touching me.”

She takes a step back, frowning. “Get your dick out, Sebastian. It really isn’t that hard. I’m trying to save your goddamned career and I’m trying to suck your dick. Both of which you should be thanking me for.” 

He just stares at her. Time feels huge, expansive. And he feels so small. Until he doesn’t. “Fuck off.”

Marianne’s mouth tightens. “Want to try that again?”

He swings his messenger bag over his shoulder. Everything that’s left, all the shit he’s got in those desk drawers, it can all rot. “No, I really don’t.”

She looks at him like he’s slapped her. “You’re fired.”

He brushes the curls off his forehead. “Fine.”

Marianne steps in front of him. “Did you hear me! I said you’re-“

“I said fine!” His voice echoes in the hall. The office has fallen into an almost eerie silence, not even the clacking of keyboards. Everyone, it seems, is holding their breath. “And you can’t fire me, you crazy bitch, because I quit.”

Sebastian runs hard into Aaron, nearly knocking him over. They stumble together against one of the cubicles. Marianne comes stumbling too out of his office, her blouse untucked from her skirt. Aaron gapes at her, then looks questioningly up at Sebastian. “I’m fired.” His voice sounds older than he’s ever heard it, deeper. “She fired me.” Aaron just blinks. “So I quit.”

Aaron looks from Sebastian to Marianne and back. He puffs himself up, adjusts the top button on his shirt. “I quit too.” He practically spits it.

They don’t take the elevator because they’re too worked up. They wind down flights and flights of stairs and while each step feels fortifying to Sebastian, Aaron is fading fast. He asks Sebastian twice for a cigarette and when Sebastian refuses the second time, stuffs his pockets in his slacks like a sullen kid.

He’s the first to speak when they hit the lobby atrium, the winter sun a bright shock when they open the stairwell door. He rolls his shoulders over and over, fluttering like a bird. “Whoo, oh shit. Whoo, I actually fucking did that.” He glances over at Sebastian. “_We _actually fucking did that.” He curls his hands into fists and does the kind of one, two punch that Sebastian’s only seen in Rocky. “Alright, alright. So I’ve never quit a job in my whole life. Literally have never done anything like this at all. Never even though about it.” He laughs, a little hysterical. “Holee fuck. What do we do now?”

They break out into the cold winter air and Sebastian lights a cigarette. He’s never seen a day this clear and this bright in all his time in the city. “We’re going to Joni’s place.”

Aaron’s still doing that bird dance, hands clenching and unclenching. “Cool, cool. Yeah, right on.”

Joni is hissing at him, hissing like a goddamn cat. She’s been doing it since he opened the door, since he breezed past both her and Leah, Aaron following him in like a lost dog. “What happened?” She’s been hissing, “what the fuck happened?” But he keeps shaking her off. Shakes her off until she grabs him hard by the arm, catching him off balance, pulling him toward her just in front of her bedroom door. “Sebastian Kouris, tell me what the fuck is going on or get the fuck out of my apartment.” Her eyes are wild. Her eyes are the kind of wild that he loves. He opens his mouth. He says nothing. He starts to cry.

Joni holds him. He’s surprised how well he fits, there in her arms. How small he can make himself. And he feels small. Tiny, really. Sobbing like a little kid, sobbing himself sick. Sobbing until he cries himself out. His breathing slows; his heart returns to its steady rhythm. He reaches up to hold her back. “We’re gonna handle this.” She tells him.

Standing in their kitchen, watching Leah chop up a pair of leeks, he believes it. Feels settled, deeply. There’s a quiet in the place where terror carved him through. He reaches for Joni, runs his thumb along the nape of her neck. She looks back at him and the sun reflects in her hair. Aaron glances up at him from their kitchen table. Whatever he sees in Sebastian’s face settles him.

They eat in silence. Pasta with butter, with leeks, with little flecks of anchovy that Leah swiped from work. The kind of food his mom used to make when money was tight. It takes a village. It feels older than him. Than all of them.

Joni rides him, her duvet surrounding their bodies like a nest. He wants her on top. Wants to see her, all of her. Every inch. Their moans echo. He holds onto her legs. Holds on tight.

In the darkness, when they’re done, the only sound her breathing, terror washes over him again. Endless terror. Vast. He’s dropped off a cliff, walked straight off the edge without even noticing. His chest is so tight, lungs heavy. Sebastian rolls over and pulls Joni to him. She sighs in her sleep, hands searching for his. He presses his palm to her chest, feels her heartbeat strong against his skin. The terror uncoils.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading guys <3


	40. Winter Roads

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Winter is different in the Valley

There are carols playing on every station. Soft and swaying, heavy with nostalgia. Every so often the carols will fade away and a weatherman will come on over the radio to tell them to expect record lows tonight, heavy snowfall in through the morning. They can feel it. There’s ice on the windows. The old heater in Leah’s car chugs along. The car is warm. The heat of their bodies and all the blanket they’d packed insulating them from the chill outside.

The drive is slow at first. A sea of cars leaving the city for the holiday weekend, but once they break out on I-85, heading south toward the Valley, it’s just them. Mostly. Every so often, a semi will come rumbling down the highway past them, Leah’s windows rattling as it rushes by. One of them is packed with shorn spruce trees, their thick trunks piled in the back bed. The thick scent of pine wafts in as the truck passes.

Joni stirs beside him, reaching up to pull at his collar. She’s been dozing the whole way, like she always does in the car and he’s pulled her as close to him as he can, letting her lay her head on his chest, draping his coat over her shoulders. He rests his chin on the crown of her head now and watches the road whizz by. Leah turns the radio up a little, taps her palms on the wheel in time with the music. High up in the evening sky, Sebastian can see the winter star twinkling beside the moon.

Aaron turns around in the front seat to look back at him. “Hey man, how far out are we?”

Joni squirms a little in his arms, but doesn’t wake. Sebastian strokes along her hairline. “'Bout an hour. Give or take.”

Aaron nods. He’s looking a little better than he had three nights ago, when they’d polished off two bottles of wine, sitting at Joni and Leah’s kitchen table wavering wildly between full-on war talks and outright panic. It had been just before twilight, as Sebastian finished off his last pack of cigarettes on their roof, when he asked Aaron if he wanted to come back to the Valley for the feast of the Winter Star. It had been a tenuous plan to go back for the weekend anyway. Sebastian figured it might be good for all of them to get the hell out of dodge. He’d agreed quickly, almost manically. Now, Aaron seems to be a little spooked. “Never been somewhere as…” Aaron takes a long look out the window, “rural as this.”

“Well get ready,” Sebastian tells him, “cause we’re just bringing you out here to fucking eat you.” Leah snorts, reaching over the turn up the heat.

“Might as well, man. Probably wouldn’t make much difference.” Sebastian reaches out and squeezes Aaron’s shoulder.

It starts to snow as they pull up the bumpy drive to the house. Big, white flakes that fall softly, quietly onto the already drifting snow. There’s no thin layer of ice like in the city. Just smooth, rolling hills of white. All the lights are on at the house. They make the caramel-y wood glow. Especially in the dark. Especially in the cold. Strings of multicolored lights blink from the eaves and around all the windows. And then there’s his mom, standing on the porch wrapped in her terry-cloth robe. She waves them in. Sebastian leans down to nudge Joni awake.

The house smells like cedar. It always has. For as long as he can remember. But smelling it now, with Joni tucked under his arm, his mother chattering loudly, her voice bright with joy, it all feels new. A nostalgic so easy it feels like a future. He presses a kiss to the top of Joni’s head before they separate. His mother nods at him, smiling that soft, knowing smile he hadn’t, until this very moment, realize how much he missed.

Robin practically yanks Joni out of his arms, pulling her into a tight hug. His mom shoots him a heavy look before letting go and wrapping Leah in her arms. “Oh, you kids. I’m so glad you made it safe. Were the roads bad?’

“Worse the closer we got, but I managed.” Leah’s beaming. Sebastian can’t remember that last time he’d seen her beaming. The smell of cinnamon wafts in from the kitchen, the warm buttery smell of pie crust, the yeasted scent of baking bread. Someone has strung sparkling white lights all along Robin’s carpentry desk, they glitter against the hard winter darkness through the windows. A stately pine towers in the corner of the front room, no doubt felled from the dense thicket of trees back behind the house. Strings of popcorn snake across the bows and Sebastian spots a few of his old handmade ornaments poking out from the dense needles. One, at the very top, closest to the star, is a picture of he and his father, nestled securely in a foam snowflake his second-grade teacher helped him cut out, glue still hanging dried off one of the edges. He feels a tug just under his ribs.

Demetrius claps him hard on the back, laughing and smiling, forcing Sebastian out of his thoughts. “You made it! Great!” It’s the beginning and end of their conversation. The sort of stunted, halting interactions they’ve always had but even that is comforting and Sebastian smiles up at him, squeezing his shoulder.

Maru winds around the group of people and Sebastian can’t hide the grin spreading rapidly across his face. He pulls her tightly to him. He can smell her strawberry shampoo. The same she’s used since she was in middle school. “Hey kid, how’s it going?”

She tucks her head under his chin. “I’m glad you’re here, Sebby.” Maru pulls away and looks past him, quirking an eyebrow. Sebastian follows her gaze. Aaron’s hanging off in the periphery, moving his hands in and out of his slack pockets like he doesn’t know what to do with them. He scuffs his shoe against the hardwood. “This your friend, then? Aaron right?”

He jumps like he’s just seen a ghost. “Yeah, uh,” he looks at Sebastian like he’s asking for permission. Sebastian’s not sure he’s ever seen Aaron this unsure, “yeah.”

Sebastian smiles a little teasingly. “I think we’re friends at this point, Aaron.”

Aaron laughs on the exhale, slumping a little. “Damn, we better be.”

‘Well,” Robin hugs him lightly, “whatever you are, I’m glad you’re here.”

He’s not really sure how they managed to slip off. But somewhere between Demetrius showing Aaron the _secret _to _perfectly coagulated _cranberry sauce and Leah and his mom falling headfirst into the same resin debate they had two Winter Star Eve’s ago, Joni nudges him, looking up at him through her long eyelashes.

The garage is cold enough that they can see their breath, so they stick to the steps where the space heater is still chugging, its long cord wrapped around the raw wood supporting beams. It feels strange, out of time, to be sitting here again. In the winter, side by side like they had the very first night they kissed. She’d seized up when he leaned over to press his lips against her, sat so still that he was sure he’d made a horrible mistake. But then, when he’d leaned back to look at her face, her eyes had widened like she’d just woken up. She’d smashed their lips together so hard his jaw had ached for a whole day after. Each little twinge of pain a warm reminder that she had actually kissed him, actually wanted to. Sebastian glances over to look at her now. Even in the low light, she’s lit up. Her hair falling in soft waves, reflecting the faint light coming in from the just open door. He leans over and kisses her. Soft and slow, like he’d dreamed of for so long before that night, years ago now. She reaches up to cup his jaw, to scoot closer until their bodies are pressed together. “I couldn’t have done this without you,” he whispers into the shell of her ear.

Joni sits back a little, blinking at him. Then she laughs and the sound is so warm that he has to fight the urge to pull her back to him. “Done what?”

He shrugs, a little sheepish. “Shit, I don’t know. Anything.”

She shakes her head, still smiling. “That’s not true.”

He reaches out, grabbing onto her arm. “It is.” He ducks a little to meet her eyes. “_It is.” _

The smile has faded from her face. They can both feel the way the energy in the room is shifting. Sharpening. There’s gravity in this. “Where is this coming from?”

“I just…” Sebastian turns away, fumbles for his cigarettes, then thinks better of it, “I just wanted you to know.”

Joni snorts, then scoots over so they’re touching again. She taps him once on the tip of his nose, then kisses just beside his lips. “Well, back at ya.”

Sebastian laughs a little weakly, runs his hands all along her arms. She’s chilled, goosebumps racing up her skin. He feels chilled too, even with the space heater clanking away. He sighs and rests his head on her shoulder. “How am I supposed to tell my mother that I’m fucking unemployed.”

A beat of silence and then Joni starts to stroke his hair. She presses a kiss to the top of his head. “You don’t have to tell her anything.”

“We’re working it out. Aaron and I. We’re gonna figure something out.” He shakes his head. The anger is new. Biting, ferocious anger at himself. Maybe Joni can feel it. She pulls him closer. He glances up at her. “Cover for me? Just for the weekend.”

She smiles, laughing a little. “Of course. Always.”

Robin knocks on the door frame and they both jump, breaking apart. “Hey, kiddos.” The wood creaks as she descends a few steps down into the garage. The golden light from the house spills into the cool darkness all around them. “Sure happy I didn’t walk in on the both of you with your pants down.”

“Holy fucking Yoba! Mom!” Sebastian can feel his cheeks burning, but Joni just laughs. She reaches across again to tuck one of his curls back behind his ear. Robin is beaming and Sebastian notices, for the first time, that the way she smiles at Joni is the way she smiles at Maru, at him.

“What? Your mom can’t tease you anymore?” She leans against one of the cluttered cabinets. “Just came down to let you know Maru got back with a couple pizzas from the Saloon. Figured you kids might want a slice or two before we work out where the lot of you are gonna sleep for the night.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading guys <3. We're heading closer to the end and I just want to say that the support I have gotten with this fic has been so incredible. You all really mean so much to me.


	41. Feast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joni and Sebastian pay a visit to the farm.

His mom mixes peppermint in his coffee. Something she’d forgotten she always did after meals like these. A meal where they’ve eaten themselves nearly sick. Candied ham and prime rib. Cranberry streusel pie and marshmallow baked yams. Demetrius’ mom’s mac and cheese and collard greens. The peppermint settles his stomach and when he whispers to Aaron that that’s what the peppermint is for, Aaron scrambles for his own cup. “I’ve never eaten this much in my whole life,” he says, quiet so Robin and Demetrius, lingering over by the far window, can’t hear, “I feel like I’m about to die.” Sebastian grins at him, a warm feeling settling in his chest. 

Maru’s already bit the dust, out cold on the couch, and the way Leah is resting her head heavily on her hand makes Sebastian think he might be next. “I should help your mom with leftovers,” Leah says sleepily, looking around like she’s just noticed the table has mostly cleared.

“I got it.” Sebastian pushes her mug a little closer to her, “take a nap. You look like you need it.”

Leah feigns a scowl, but gets up, stretching and yawning. She ruffles Joni’s hair as she passes and Sebastian watches Joni reach up to playfully pat at her, then watches as she settles back and notices that she isn’t really drinking her coffee. She’s holding her mug in her hands, looking a little wistfully out the window. They make eye contact and she shifts, pursing her lips. The sunlight streaming through the windows is the kind that he’s always liked best. Heavy and golden like it’s held the whole day in its arms, come out richer for it. The soft rays of light settling on her skin make her freckles look luminous, her hair shimmery. But her eyes are still so distant and it’s then, in the sleepy late afternoon time after holiday dinner, that Joni tells Sebastian she wants to see Shane. And Sebastian tries to pretend he isn’t jealous. “Might as well pop on,” she says, shrugging like she’s trying to just brush it off. But he can hear an echo of longing in her voice. It eats at him.

She seems happier here. Lighter. He can tell. There’s a bounce in her step as they head down the snowy path. Joni reaches over to take his hand. He squeezes hers tightly.

There’s a chill in the air as they walk, but it hits differently than in the city, doesn’t seep into his bones. A fresh coat of snow fell as they slept and it glitters in the bright sunlight, the sky a clear, brilliant blue. They kick up powder along the trail with their boots and it hangs in the air, shimmering. They’d left Leah and Aaron dozing in recliners by the front fireplace, his sister wrapped tightly in a quilt on the couch. Just the two of them here on this quiet path, the pines that line it heavy with snow.

Sebastian can hear the festival before he sees it. The carolers and the quiet rumble of conversation. A few kids shouting and laughing. The clinking of bottles and glasses. He wraps his scarf tighter around himself as the town square comes into view. Even in the daylight, it glitters. Lights and pine garland are strung from street lamp to street lamp, strings of popcorn and cranberries on the eaves of buildings. The great tree in the center of the square towers over them, even from the distance, delicate ornaments bobbing from its boughs. The soft breeze that whispers through it picks up the scent of pine and carries it across the snow.

The carolers have taken a break, gathering around a steaming pot of mulled wine the color of cherries. He spots Granny Mullner at the head of the pack, a jeweled, holly-shaped pin secured on the lapel of her velvet coat. Gus is red-faced and fussing around the banquet table, trying to keep a stack of lush pomegranates from toppling over onto a platter of wobbling, green jelly molded in the shape of an ornate star. He smiles at Caroline as she weaves through the crowd, dragging a weary-looking Pierre along behind her, her blonde hair still just the slightest tinge of green from all the time she spends in the pool. Joni is quiet beside him and then she suddenly perks up, waving, standing on the very tips of her toes.

“Hell-o!’ Emily sing songs, voice loud enough that it startles a dozing old man Mullner. She hurries through the crowd toward where the two of them have stopped just beside the clinic. Her hair is an extra vibrant shade of aquamarine, her sweater hemmed in tinsel. “You’re back!” She pulls Joni into a tight hug, then turns and forces Sebastian into one. “Holy Yoba, you’re back.” A sly, knowing smile crosses her face. “I thought you might be. The sun is conjunct with the moon tonight and Saturn will soon be transiting Pisces.” She brushes back Joni’s hair then reaches over to squeeze Sebastian’s arm. “You two…” She trails off, smiling dreamily.

Joni takes Emily’s face in her hands, kissing her high on her cheekbone. “I want to see you tonight. Come hang out with us.”

Sebastian tucks his hands into the pockets of his jeans, scanning the scene. He spots Sam and Abigail lingering over by the Saloon and his chest constricts. He raises his hand in a timid wave. Abigail returns it, frowning. Sam just turns his back.

* * *

Sebastian is trying to give them space, but he’s on the last cigarette in his pack and his fingers are starting to go numb. He’s not sure why Joni and Shane have insisted on talking whatever they’re talking about out on the front porch and not inside Marnie’s warm ranch, but he isn’t about to wade into those waters. He ashes his cigarette out on the faded, white fence post he’s leaning on. One of the cows glares at him. He glares right back. 

Sebastian glances back at the ranch house to see Marnie lingering just inside the front window, fussing with the curtain. He smiles a little to himself. She’s probably wondering what the fuck is going on. He imagines it’s got to be killing her to see them all out in the cold, half expects her to come storming out to herd them all inside.

Joni’s laugh pulls him from his thoughts. He watches as the two of them hug, as she pats Shane on the arm. He wants to be angry, wants to feel those familiar barbs of jealousy in his chest. But he can’t be. He doesn’t. Everything is so quiet in the snow and Joni looks peaceful, content. He’s working himself into trying to feel that way too when they both glance over at him. He freezes, fingers twitching for the cigarette he already put out. Shane heads down the steps, hands tucked in the pockets of his thick, plaid jacket. It’s the kind Seb’s dad used to wear. The kind all the men in town still wear. Distinctly rural. He saunters up, breath billowing out in front of him. “Hey man.”

“Hey yourself.” Sebastian’s voice is deeper than he means it to be, his body all tensed up.

“I just wanted to come over and say I’m sorry.”

Sebastian frowns, confused, but then brushes him off. “It’s whatever dude. Don’t stress about it.”

“No.” Sebastian jolts when Shane lays his hand on Sebastian’s shoulder, peering up at him. “I’m serious. I want to make amends to you.”

Sebastian nearly recoils. He is really, _really _not in the mood for whatever soul-searchy weirdness is happening right now. Especially not from Shane. Especially not after that night on Joni’s porch. It still feels fresh. Even now. “You don’t need to do that.”

“I think I really might.”

There’s something in his voice that makes Sebastian pause. An earnestness. He sounds older. Sounds almost wise. Sebastian looks at him, really looks at him. His green eyes are wide and clear, almost boyish; stubble scattered along that newly chiseled jaw. A warmth settles in his chest. He’d first met Shane the year after his dad died. Shane arrived at Marnie’s shivering and skinny and desperately, desperately forlorn. Two fucked up kids. They’d always been that way, really. Groping around in the darkness, just trying to figure shit out. It always seemed so much harder for both of them than anyone else in the Valley. They’d always had that in common. Sebastian sighs, rolling his shoulders. He looks a little off-center, away from Shane. “I could probably stand to apologize too.” Sebastian doesn’t need to see Joni’s smile. He can feel it.

It feels like their old place again, sitting out on the porch, passing a bottle of wine back and forth. Feels like they live here again. Sebastian’s chest tightens. He can’t look out at the rolling hills of the farm anymore, at the way the ground slopes toward the forest, the river. He stares instead at the worn porch steps under his boots.

Shane talked them into coming over, all of them. Leah and Aaron piling back into her car and braving the mostly unplowed roads on the way to the farm.

They’re inside now, watching some Winter Star special or other on tv. Emily came over with a couple joints and Sebastian can smell their earthy scent wafting out from under the door. If he had the time he might come down and fix that, seal these old windows and doors the way his dad taught him too when he was young. But it’s not his place anymore. Not much point in fixing it up. He frowns, lighting a cigarette.

Beside him, Joni shifts, pulling her knees up to rest her chin on them. “I’ve been thinking about the Valley a lot.” A beat of silence.” I mean before we even came back this weekend.”

Sebastian takes a long pull of his cigarette and leans back. He reaches unconsciously for where Goose would have normally by now wrapped his way around Sebastian’s side, remembering with a jolt that the cat is back in Zuzu with Rita. He curls his fingers back like he’s been burned. “Me too.”

“I miss it.” She’s rubbing again at that spot on her collarbone and Sebastian bites back the urge to take her hands away in his. “It feels like home.”

He lets that sink in some. How this place wasn’t her home and now it is. How it’s always been his home and now, maybe for the first time, he wants it to be. How much he loves her. How thoroughly, painfully, _violently _he loves her and how that’s enough. How he knows now, for sure, that it’s enough. But his words fail him. He takes another drag and says, “yeah, I know what you mean.”

She sighs. “That must be so hard for you.”

He blinks at her. “What?”

She just shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t really know what I’m saying, sorry.”

He turns to face her full now. “Don’t be sorry.”

She nods, taking her bottom lip between her teeth. Her eyes are a little glazed over, a little far away. She takes a deep breath and then, like she’s spitting it out, says, “Leah’s moving back here.”

Sebastian blinks once, twice. He frowns, trying to let that sink in. When it does, it hits him like a train. “What?”

“Yep.”

He ashes his cigarette. “When?” Joni just shrugs and Sebastian finds, again, that he has no idea what to say. His own brain is trying to catch up, trying to understand. He pulls her over to him in the meantime. She lets him, curling up like a little cat in his arms. He rests his head in her hair, breathing her in, finding that, somehow, even in the starkest days of winter she still smells, just faintly, of peonies. A little bit like honey, the most floral parts of it. He feels a twinge of panic before an almost supernatural calm overtakes him. A path that had once been so clear, so obvious, is now shattered. And yet the grief he expected to feel is nowhere to be found. Instead, he just feels warm. Feels, oddly, free. Someone opens the side window to dump the ashtray into the snow. The sound of quiet chatter wafts into the still night.

“Should have figured you’d be out here.”

Sebastian inhales, turning to face Shane as he slips outside onto the porch. It’s barely dawn. He and Joni made a little bed for themselves out on the couch and while she fell immediately into a sleep so deep she’d barely budged, he’d tossed and turned for hours. Finally giving up and heading outside to smoke, to watch the sunrise. He couldn’t stop thinking about Leah moving and Marianne pacing her sterile apart like an angry dog. The image of his bank account hemorrhaging money like coins on a Sunday cartoon. The clean, cold air’s helped mellow his thoughts out so much that even Shane’s sudden appearance doesn’t ruffle him, Sebastian nods for Shane to sit. He does, his terrycloth bathrobe parting over his splayed knees. “You didn’t ever fucking sleep in high school either. Like a vampire bat.”

“Yeah, well. You know.”

“I think I do yeah.”

Sebastian eyes him. Thre are so many ways in which he’s different than Sebastian remembers him, different maybe than he’s ever been. There’s peace in his eyes, acceptance. A kind of calm that Sebastian can only dream about. And when he thinks about it, really thinks about it, Shane being sober this long, or shit, sober at all, is nothing short of a miracle. “I’m glad you’re alright.” It’s out of his mouth before he even realizes he’s going to say it.

Shane looks at him a little funny. “Like now or in general?”

Sebastian manages a laugh. “Either.” He shrugs. “Both.”

“Yeah well right back at ya.” Sebastian scoffs a little but nods, offering Shane a cigarette. He shakes his head, leans back on his hands and looks out toward the river. They sit in silence for a long while. Sebastian smokes his way through the rest of his pack and Shane just seems content to look out at the farm, to watch as the night changes. An owl hoots off in the lonely distance and soon the sky starts to pale, the stars blinking away, the sun rising like a soft yolk over the trees. Shane gets to his feet with a groan. “Whelp probably should rummage up some grub for breakfast. ”

Sebastian looks back at him. “I can help cook.”

“Hell nah, I don’t cook.” Shane winks. “Gonna go get some eggs and bacon from the Saloon, dozen donuts from Joja.”

* * *

Sebastian notices, after his second episode of the Queen of Sauce, Leah dozing beside him on the couch, that he doesn’t know where Joni is. He stands, taking a look around the front room. “You seen Joni?”

Leah wipes at her eyes. “Oh shit, I have no idea.”

Sebastian ruffles his hair. He’d dozed a little too. “I’ll find her. Probably just went out for some air.” He skirts around the couch, back across that well-worn path between the phone and the front door. Aaron has been talking with venture capitalists all morning and is, as Sebastian breezes past them, is in the process of promising a worried and hovering Shane that he’ll send him a check for all the long-distance calls he made. 

Sebastian heads out onto the porch. He’s surprised to see that she isn’t out on the porch and instead sees her footprints in the snow, leading around back toward the shed. He feels a strange, quiet panic. Remembers the first night that he ever touched her, ever made her cum. Remembers too what Elliot had written about that night. The thought sparks rage inside of him, terror too. He brushes it off. He doesn’t want to give Elliot a room here on land that has started to feel almost sacred. Sebastian pulls his coat a little tighter around himself and treks through the snowdrifts around the back of the house. The shed door is open. Sebastian hesitates. This feels, a little, like intruding on something private, something important. But something spurs him on and he peers into the shed. It smells like sawdust, the air thick with bobbing dust motes.

He finds Joni crouched over an open box, rummaging through. “Watcha doing?”

She doesn’t even look up. “Looking for something.”

Sebastian hefts the door open enough that he can slip through then heads toward the back, weaving through stacks of books and boxes. He crouches down beside her and presses a kiss to her shoulder through the thin fabric of her t-shirt. She is, of course, not wearing a coat. “Any luck?”

Joni sits back on her haunches and sets a photograph down in her lap, holding onto it like it might break “Yeah.” She holds the photo up for him. It’s old. Has that sepia tarnish all photos from the seventies have. Sebastian waits a beat, not really breathing, then takes it gingerly from her. He doesn’t remember the photo being taken, but he knows without a shadow of a doubt that it’s of him. And Joni. She’s tiny in the photo. Can’t be older than six and hasn’t yet grown into her long legs and thick lips. She looks like a spindly little fawn, her golden hair a tangled mess catching the light in all directions. Both of her front teeth are missing but that doesn’t stopped her from showing the widest, gummiest grin to the camera. Her face even more freckled than it is now. She’s wearing a pair of tattered overalls, one strap missing and that side sags a little in the front. Underneath, a Scooby-Doo t-shirt. Her feet stuffed into a pair of ratty sneakers. She looks exuberant, just absolutely full to the brim with joy. And that’s probably why Sebastian is watching her like he is in the photo. His head cocked to look at her, like she’s maybe the strangest thing he’s ever seen, but he’s leaning toward her, almost protectively. His hands nervously clasped between his knobby knees, jean ripped and patched. He’s got long shaggy hair that he let fall over his eyes and Sebastian reaches up to self-consciously brush a few of his curls off his forehead.

He hands the photo back. “Do you remember that day?”

Joni takes it, examining it again. She shakes her head. “No, not really. I was pretty sure we’d met. At least once.” She glances up at him. “I mean how could we not have. We both spent so much time here as kids. Thought I might root around in the shed and see if I could find any proof.”

A wave of tenderness rises up in Sebastian. He leans over and kisses her just on the corner of her lips. She scoots forward, wrapping her arms around his neck. He doesn’t know what to say and she doesn’t seem to either. There’s something heavy in the air around them, something important.

Joni is the first to move, shifting backward and toward the box. “There’s other stuff in here too.” Her fingers hover on the edge of the box. “I never really looked through the shed until now.” She pulls out a silken shawl, fringe hanging from the edges, pops of bright, floral color. “This must have been my mom’s.” She hands it to Sebastian and he folds it carefully in his lip. Joni looks back into the box, shaking her head and smiling. “Weird stuff too.” She digs around, remerging with a closed fist. She uncurls her fingers to reveal three glistening pearls resting on her palm. “Do you think they’re real?”

Sebastian takes one between his fingers, holds it up to the light filtering in through the shed’s narrow window. “Probably. I can’t really imagine your granddad keeping fake pearls around.”

Joni laughs. She takes the pearl back and tucks all three into her coat pocket.

“The trees are doing great, did you notice? The peaches Shane planted last fall.”

“It’s winter.”

She scoffs at him. “You can tell how trees are doing even in winter. What happened to your country boy shit?” Sebastian shrugs, laughing. Joni’s face falls a little. “The flowers aren’t doing as well. In the greenhouse.” Sebastian brushes some hair of her face. Her mouth is tight. “Shane says they don’t like him as much.” Joni manages a weak laugh but Sebastian can see the pain blooming across her face. He swallows hard. He doesn’t know what to say, his chest tight. Joni shakes her head, straightening up and closing the box. “Aaron’s been on the phone a lot. Everything okay?”

Sebastian stands, brushing dust off his jeans, then offers his hand to help Joni to her feet. “Yeah, yeah. He, uh, drafted up a business plan a couple days ago. Pitching it to investors now. It seems like it might become, like, I don’t know, a real thing.”

Pain passes over her face, so brief he almost misses it before she replaces it with a big smile. “That’s huge.”

“Yeah.”

They both shift a little where they’re standing, a dense quiet falling around them. Light streams in front from the shed’s open door. It doesn’t quite reach them.

He considers closing the door of the shed, considers curling up beside Joni, the two of them laying there like a pair of stray dogs. He considers never leaving. Aaron raps on the shed door. “You guys fucking in here or what?”

“Come see,” Sebastian says, rising to his feet with a grunt, fumbling in his coat for his cigarettes.

Aaron snorts, poking his head into the shed. “Yo, we gotta head out or we’ll be stuck in traffic for the rest of our natural lives.”

“I know, I know.” He takes the cigarette in his teeth, roots around for his lighter. “I’m fucking coming” He glances back at Joni. She's stood up too. Her jaw is set, fingers rubbing that spot on her collarbone. He offers her his hand, reaching back, the air chills his fingers. She looks at him, swallows hard, then takes his hand in hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading guys <3. I hope to be doing more consistent updates in a week or two.


	42. Gridball

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joni makes good on her promise.

Shane’s team wins. Handily. And he’s giddy like a kid as they pile out of the stadium. His joy is contagious and Joni can’t help but smile even as they’re jostled on all sides by the sweaty, jersey-wearing masses, funneled through a narrow concrete hallway out into the vast parking lot.

Shane buys himself a Joja cola from the rattling vending machine a ways down the from the entrance, then he buys Joni one, beaming. They crack them open in unison, the sound crisp and clear in the advancing quiet of the night. The stadium’s on the outskirts of town, in a rougher part, far enough away that once the crowd has piled into their cars, taillights snaking in a bright line away from them, the parking lot falls into a hush. The towering floodlights above the lot blink on, all at once, a fluorescent glow against the pale blue of the twilight sky. It’s the first warm night since fall. They can still see their breath, but Joni’s warm in only Sebastian’s light coat.

Joni takes a long sip of her cola, shifting a little on her feet. She’s feeling strange lately. Stranger than usual. Pretty much ever since they all got back from the Valley. Nostalgic. Vast. And so, when the small talk between the two of them wanes, she can’t really keep her mouth shut. “Do you remember the day after you tried to kill yourself?” She nearly slaps her hand over her own mouth. Fucking Yoba, what the hell is she even thinking?

But Shane takes it in stride, chuckling into his can of cola. “Whoa, alright. We’re going there then, huh?”

“No, I mean, we don’t have to.” Joni stuffs her hands into the pockets of Sebastian’s coat. “Forget it. I don’t know what I’m saying.”

“No, no. It’s cool.” He smiles absently, scuffing the toe of his sneakers on the asphalt. “I remember that day. Clear as a bell.”

“Yeah, of course.”

“So, what about it?”

Joni chews at her bottom lip, wishing suddenly that she had a cigarette. Just something for her to stall with. She has nothing. She takes a deep breath. “Remember when I told you…well, no…remember when I didn’t tell you anything at all?”

Shane knits his brow. “Mostly I just remember your cobbler. Couldn’t figure out how you managed to make a crust both burnt and soggy.” Joni laughs, but it comes out nervous, a little shaky. “So.” He looks up at her. “What didn’t you tell me that day?”

“I tried to kill myself.” Shane has no reaction, just nods quietly, and Joni exhales. That’s it, isn’t it? No matter how understanding Leah or Sebastian have always been there’s something about _this, _the unspoken language between two people who know _exactly _what the other is talking about that makes her wish she’d done this so much sooner. “Few months before you did, actually.”

“Well shit.”

Joni laughs again, this time for real. “Yep.”

“How?”

“Pills.”

Shane nods silently again, takes another sip of his cola. “Why?”

Joni frowns, looking out at the empty parking lot. The hospital’s only a couple miles away. Just across the highway. Funny that. “Lotta reasons, I guess.”

“Yeah, that’s how it goes.”

Joni smiles softly. She’s been worrying something to pieces in Sebastian’s pocket, pulls her hand out to find the remains of a rolling paper, flecks of tobacco on her fingertips. “I guess I just want you to know like, I get it. I don’t know. This conversation is really about a year too late probably. Maybe two.” She looks over at him again. “I just want you to know you aren’t alone.”

“I do know that.” He looks at her, his eyes still so calm and easy. He smiles, looking a little away. “I always figured we had shit in common. Didn’t ever know exactly what but…” He trails off, finishing his cola and setting the can down on the concrete by the stadium. “I’m glad we’re friends.” Joni smiles, reaching over to squeeze his shoulder. Shane scuffs his shoe again. “You know, I used to live around here, actually.”

“No shit?”

Shane chuckles. “Well, _live _might be a generous term.” He shakes his head, a slight smile on his face. “Squatting’s probably a better one. More accurate, at least. Couple streets down actually, by the overpass.” Joni quirks an eyebrow. Shane shrugs. “There’s a YMCA a block over that’ll look after your shit while you take a shower. And the cans around the stadium are a fucking food pantry if you hang around once the crowds clear out.”

“You were homeless.” It isn’t really a question.

He nods. “For a couple years, yeah. Felt a little bit like I was fulfilling a prophecy, honestly.” Joni cocks her head. “Growing up my parents were, uh, occupied.”

“Occupied.”

“Junkies.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah, they went the way most junkies go.” Shane laughs, a little wistful, a little dark. “Lived in the Valley with Marnie for a long time. She was the only stable thing in my life. I mean you know how she is. Had a pretty normal childhood because of her.” He looks teasingly over at her, then his face falls, corner of his mouth twitching downward. “But, uh, that particular sickness runs in the family. Hit me like a ton of bricks after I left high school.” He chuckles to himself. “Easy to get your ass evicted when you’re blowing rent money on horse.” He sighs. Joni looks hard at him, studying his face. She wants to ask what year he moved back to the Valley, wonders if they ever met in the city when he was using. If they brushed up against each other, two lost little animals caught in an undertow. “You don’t have a cigarette, do you?”

“Nah, sorry.”

“First time in my life I wish Sebastian was here.”

Joni elbows him, laughing. “Come on and here I thought you guys were playing nice.”

Shane holds up his hands in mock surrender. “We are, we are.” Silence falls between them, heavier than before. Some of the concessions workers have started to pile out of the stadium, smoking cigarettes, talking and joking. Some of them still in their aprons. Their cars are the furthest out, on the edges of the lot, their sole company. The sky along the horizon line is darkening now, the stars blotted out by the city lights. “I got clean.” Shane clears his throat. “Eventually. Marnie got me clean, really. Pulled me back to the Valley. And I stayed that way for a couple of years until…well, it doesn’t really matter, but I guess I just figured booze was better than smack.” He chuckles. “Learned that lesson.”

“Seems like you learned that lesson pretty well.”

Shane raises an eyebrow. “Does it?”

“Yeah, absolutely. You seem together.”

"Ha. Hardly." He sighs. “Running a farm ain’t easy.”

Joni frowns. “Hello left field.”

“Sorry,” Shane sighs again, leaning back against the stadium’s concrete wall. “I just….I don’t know. It’s hard work. I mean you know that.” He looks sidelong at her and smiles. “Besides, I kind of miss you.”

“I miss you too.” She lays her head on his shoulder. “I’m glad we did this.”

“Ah, you don’t even like gridball.”

“I don’t.” Shane snorts. “But I’m still glad we did this.” Shane beams, pulling away, then nods toward his car. They head quietly toward it, those tall lights casting shadows over them as they walk. Joni clears her throat. “I, um, I’ve been missing the farm lately. Like a lot.”

Shane unlocks the passenger door, then slips over the front to his own. “The farm misses you too.”

Joni laughs. “Yeah, yeah, sure.”

“No, I’m serious.” She glances up over the car at him. “_Seriously_. I think it tolerates me. At best. Most of the time I feel like it’s holding its breath, waiting for you.”

Joni swallows hard, glancing down at the asphalt. “What would you even do if I came back?” When she looks up again, he’s still standing beside the car’s open door. “Where would you live?”

Shane shrugs. There’s an incredible peace in his eyes, an unshakeable calm. “We’d figure it out. You know?” A sudden rush of urgency rolls over her, so intense she can barely breathe. She tamps it down. There is so much at stake. _Too much. _She can feel it, so thick she can almost reach out and touch it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading guys <3.


	43. Grooved Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joni dives back into her past and, when she resurfaces, makes a decision.

Joni has her mother’s big lips. Her grandfather’s eyes. But when he opens the door, glass chimes jingling as he does, she remembers that all her other bits come from her father. Right down to the way he startles so badly at surprises. And this, whoo boy, _this _must be quite the surprise.

It’s the first honest to Yoba warm day of the year. The snow mostly gone from the sidewalks and streets and just the faintest chill still hanging in the air. They’re standing in the apartment building’s open hall, Sebastian a little further back, hands in his pockets, giving them a little space.

“Joni!” He blinks like he’s trying to wake himself up from a dream. “You’re here.” He’s looking older than she remembers, sandy hair just a little grey around his temples, wrinkles beside his mouth and eyes. But he’s still got the same sun-worshipper tan she remembers, still has that same gravely surfer dude voice he always has.

Joni laughs a little weakly, hands tucked into the pockets of her jeans. “Sure am.”

He laughs too, eyes darting a little back and forth. “Oh man, you shoulda called. I would have uh,” he rubs at his neck, then glances behind her, noticing Sebastian for the first time. “Who’s this.”

Sebastian steps forward, hand outstretched. “Sebastian.”

Her dad takes it. “Well, hi. I’m, um, Tommy.”

Joni pats his arm, stepping closer to his side. “This is, um, my boyfriend.”

Her dad blinks up at him, then back to Joni. “Oh. Well, nice to meet you.” He tucks his hands into the pockets of his pale, tattered jeans. “Alright.” He smiles. “Okay.”

Joni matches his nervous smile. “Okay.”

He bounces a little on the balls of his feet, then stops, narrowing his eyes at Sebastian. “Sebastian.” Her dad shakes his head. “Wait a minute, are you Andreas’ kid? From the Valley?”

Joni looks quickly back at Sebastian, worried that this whole thing might have been some kind of awful mistake. But Sebastian just smiles. “That’s me.”

Her dad beams, laughing for real this time. “Ho-lee shit. Isn’t time a trip? Shoulda recognized that accent right away, my man.” He rocks back on his feet. “You look _just _like him.” Joni looks between them again. Sebastian looks unfazed. Looks, in that moment, so together, so adult. She reaches over toward him, their fingers brush, holding lightly together. Her dad musses his own messy hair. “Wow, _wow. _How’s your mom? Robin, holy Yoba, haven’t thought about that chickadee in, shit, years. We must really be getting old if this is what her baby boy looks like now.”

Sebastian smiles, squeezing Joni’s fingers once, twice. “She’s good. Real good.” His accent has been stronger lately. That sweet, honeyed twang back in full force.

“Good. Good.” A beat of silence. A few birds cry from the bare trees out along the street. A door to an apartment one floor down slams. “That’s great.” He swallows hard then moves out of the doorway. “Well come in, come in. It’s freezing out here.”

The inside smells like patchouli. Like incense has seeped into the very wallpaper. Joni remembers all those weekend afternoons as a kid when he would burn the stuff nonstop and wonders if maybe it has. Sebastian toes his shoes off in the entryway, eyes roving over the woven textile rugs that line the hallway. When he sees the Grateful Dead poster hanging prominently on the wall, he can’t help but smirk back at Joni. She raises a teasing eyebrow in warning. A fat, scruffy orange cat ambles out into the hall, meowing softly when she sees that she has visitors. Joni glances back at her dad. “You got a new cat.”

“Yep.” Her dad shuts the door, stands with his hands on his hips, that grin still plastered on his face. “Buddy from the shelter keeps calling me when they get neonatal kittens. They say I got a knack for, I don’t know, nursing the little dudes like their mamas might.” He leans down to rub between the cat’s ears. “Couldn’t let this one go though. Named her Aphrodite.” He groans as he stands, pads past them to light a thick beeswax candle on the entryway table. Its pale yellow wax has melted all over the tabletop, dried in big globs. “Your mom had a thing for Aphrodite. Was way into sacred motherhood, you feel? Groovy stuff. Thought it might be fitting.” Joni pauses, halfway down to pet the cat. She’d forgotten about this. Her mother’s ghost haunting his every word. It feels darker here, more confined than the presence she’d felt out on the farm. Just an echo. Joni tries not to let it break her heart, leans down to let the cat rub up against her palm.

Joni stands, her feet knocking up against an old terracotta pot. There’s a row of them up against the front wall, the wood underneath a little water warped. They’re full of mint and lemongrass and dill. Fragrant as she brushes past them. Clumps of dirt cake the outsides, like her father had just dragged them off the porch once the weather got cold. Joni reaches out to brush the curtain from the front window, its gossamer fabric like the shawl she’d pulled from the box in the shed. Her fingertips brush the glass of the window and she closes her eyes. She can almost hear that rhythmic pounding of the washing machine, can see that man walking shrouded down the open hall. The fear she’d felt, the creeping disgust, is nowhere to be found. Instead, all she feels is a quiet heartbreak. A longing. She glances back at her father, fussing over that candle, and wonders if he had any inkling at all. It must have eaten her mother up. All those things she needed to say but couldn’t. Joni glances back at Sebastian. He’s looking around the front room, a soft smile on his lips. A wave of tenderness washes over her. Gratitude so intense that she has to stop herself from reaching out and pulling him tightly to her.

“Don’t you have a cat down on that farm of yours?” Joni turns to face her father, feels Sebastian stiffen behind her. They hadn’t really talked about this. Any of it really. What they’d tell her dad. Why she even decided to bring them here in the first place. She’d just been feeling a kind of way after that weekend in the Valley, a feeling that had morphed into a weird, sort of vague determination. For them to meet. For them to talk. And now they’re here. And it feels a little like walking off a cliff. But Sebastian just smiles, shrugging off his jean jacket. “Yeah. Goose is a regular barn cat.” And that makes her dad laugh and Joni feels the air in the room soften. Comfortable like maybe it’s never been.

Joni’s dad wavers a little in the narrow hall. “Listen,” he stuffs his hands into the pockets of his jeans, kicking at the floorboards with his bare feet, “I got some lentils on the stove. Was just making an herbal infusion. You kids wanna stay for lunch?”

The herbal infusion was the dark green of late summer algae. It tasted like bitter nettles, left a gritty film on their tongues. The lentils had been on the stove, but they weren’t cooking. Her dad had been sprouting them. Served them up raw and damp, just a quick dusting of curry powder on top. They crunched on their teeth and Joni watched from across the kitchen table as Sebastian grimaced with each bite. _These are great_, Sebastian would say when he caught her dad looking, _you have to give me the recipe._

“You’re a good sport,” Joni tells him, leaning on the railing of her dad’s narrow little balcony. She followed Sebastian out for a smoke once they cleared the dishes, but she can still hear her dad banging around in the kitchen, probably buying himself time before he follows them out here too.

Sebastian scoffs. “You think?”

“Yeah, absolutely. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my dad talk so much to someone he just met. And uh,” she gestures to her mouth, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone eat so many sprouted lentils in one sitting.”

Sebastian coughs, stifling laughter. He takes a long drag, blows smoke out of the side of his mouth. “Well, you were not fucking kidding when you said think Woodstock.”

“Ha, just wait. My dad likes you so he’ll probably try to smoke you up before we leave.”

He snorts, then glances over at her. “You okay?”

Joni swallows hard. She’s been feeling a creeping strangeness since she walked in the front door and now she can see that Sebastian’s realized it too. The question had probably been off-hand but she can feel the way her long silence has drawn his attention, looks back to find him looking her straight on now, brow furrowed. She shrugs. “I guess.” He raises a single eyebrow. “I just…” she wavers, suddenly unsure. The space between them now feels vast, the chill in the air settling in now that the sun is slipping toward the horizon. “I think I just thought that if I came back here, I might feel the same as I did last time we were in the Valley. Like home.”

“And do you?”

“No,” she says, “but…I think I realized something.”

Sebastian takes a long drag, gazing out at the parking lot behind the building. “What’s that?”

“I realized…that I feel like home,” she glances over at him, “with you.”

Sebastian pauses, cigarette suspended just a few inches from his lips. When he looks over at her, his eyes are molten. “Is that so bad?”

Joni crosses her arms over her chest, bouncing a little on the balls of her feet. “You aren’t a place I can go to.” 

“_I am._”

She fixes him with a hard look. “_You _can leave whenever you want.”

“But I won’t.”

“But you did.”

“But I _won’t._”

Joni looks at him. Really looks at him. At the slope of his aquiline nose, at those hard pale eyes that soften when he looks at her. The setting sun lights him up, makes the warmth of his olive skin even more intense. She remembers the very first time they’d been side by side like this, walking back along the mountain path to the farm on that sweltering summer day. He’d been guilted into helping fix her bike, but did it so well, sat beside her on the porch sipping sweet tea, almost reached out to touch her. Yoba, it had been years since that afternoon and here Sebastian still is, right beside her. “I know.”

Sebastian reaches over and takes her hand. He presses a kiss to each knuckle, then opens her palm and presses a kiss there too. “Good.” His eyes glitter in the sun, simmering with a need that she recognizes in herself.

The book is heavy in her hands, heavier than it should be. The cover’s so worn that she can’t make out the title, but Joni can see the faded outline of peonies, a few lilies at the base. “That was your mom’s favorite.” Her dad pipes up from behind her.

Joni glances back. “Oh yeah?” She doesn’t really know what she’s feeling, but she _does _know that she wants to stop feeling it. This messy soup of nostalgia and anger, tinged with a guilty excitement.

“Oh sure, she’d be up all night with it, for real. Taking notes, getting the vibes from it.” Joni cracks it open. The pages are a little stiff. Worn. Well-loved. “That was a big dream of hers, you know. To do something with flowers.” Joni’s heart aches.

“Must run in the family.” Sebastian smiles from beside her. Joni tries not to feel bottomless.

“No shit?”

Joni shrugs, shutting the book. “I was doing some floral arranging for a while.”

“Holy Yoba.” Her dad beams at her. “That is such a trip! Wow! I’m so proud of you.” Joni falters. She is sure he’s never said that before. His smile’s a little dreamy, like he’s smoked a joint, and Joni feels a spike of anger that he could be so carefree, so goddamn neglectful. And then, a sharp pang of guilt. “I’m not really doing it anymore.”

He brushes her off. “Eh, still. You do what you can when you can.”

That is, without a doubt, the wisest thing her father has ever said and Joni almost laughs. But she doesn’t, instead runs her thumb along the spine of the book. “Can I?” she lifts the book, “take this?”

“Yeah of course. It’s not, like, getting much use around here” Her dad shuffles a little awkwardly on his feet. “Thanks for coming.” A beat of heavy silence. Joni feels like she might throw up. “I um, I’m around you know. If you want to do this again.”

That anger rises up again. Joni has a sharp, sudden urge to start yelling. _Where the fuck were you!? Where have you been this entire time!? Why was it me?! Me?! Who had to come here first!? _Then suddenly, she feels Sebastian’s hand on the back of her neck. Steady pressure, his thumb tracing soft circles on her skin. She manages a smile. “That would be nice. Thanks, dad.”

The train rattles as it takes its wide turn along the harbor, the sunset a livid pink, filtering through the train’s streaked windows. It’ll be spring soon. Robin taught her that. How to watch sunsets for hints of the seasons. Joni’s leaning heavily against Sebastian, letting the smoke-tinged scent of him fill her lungs. Even through her light coat, she can feel his thumb brushing softly, rhythmically along her arm. She flips open the book again, heavy on her lap, and pages through it. It’s alphabetical. Each flower with its own intricate anatomical drawing and then pages and pages of information. How to grow, how to trim back, best ways to arrange, preserve. Her heart starts to pound, a sweet rush of excitement blooming inside of her. She can use this. She _wants _to use this. Wants to get her hands in the dirt again, to whisper softly into the petals of her flowers. _Her _flowers. The ones that are languishing in the tepid light of her apartment.

A month before her last stay in the hospital, she’d put the website for her floral arranging on hold. It had been too much. Too overwhelming. A heavy urgency rises up in her. Joni turns, looking up at Sebastian. “Hey.”

He brushes some hair off her forehead. “Hmm?”

“Would you help me set my website back up?”

He blinks at her. She watches something pass over his eyes, something she can’t identify, then he pulls her tightly to him, resting his head on her hair. “Yeah, yeah. Of course.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading guys <3


	44. Bloom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new opportunity forces Joni to face what has been simmering under the surface.

Every time the door opens it brings with it the scent of flowers. Cherry blossoms. Joni can tell without even looking. Slightly bitter-sweet. Just the faintest hint of the fruit buried in their thick floral scent. There are two big cherry trees outside the store, some of the only flowering trees on the street and Joni wonders if Lydia picked this place because of them or if she’s old enough to have planted them. It’s a silly thought. A little fantastical. Like a mermaid in a bathtub. Joni glances back at the register where Lydia is sorting through her lists. She’s got a single pink petal caught in her dark hair. Joni gets back to her work before Lydia can catch her staring, hoists a box of books over her shoulder and heads back toward the stacks nearer the register to start shelving them.

They’re busy today, whole crowds of people meandering through the shop. The air smells thick with flowers, the bell atop the door ringing like a little melody each time someone goes through.. It’s a warm day, but not warm enough for them to leave the door propped open. So each time the bell rings that scent of flowers comes rushing inside, washing over her, tinged with a cool breeze. Right now, in the Valley it would smell like the earth waking up. Like grass and the subtle rot of soil. Like potential. The thought feels like an echo and, for a moment, she is standing on the farmhouse’s front porch – the gnarled, sun-bleached wood warm under her bare feet – looking out at the rolling plot of land, at the swaying grasses that lead down toward the river. Joni shakes the thought from her head. Her chest gets tight anytime she thinks about it. An urgent, panicked feeling rushes through her. Feels distinctly like walking off a cliff.

Joni heads back to the register with the empty box and is packing it up again with new donations and a couple new releases, when Lydia clears her throat. Joni glances over at her. The old woman hands her a cup of coffee, a clear sign she wants Joni to take a break, wants to talk about something. Joni glances around the shop. No one seems like they need help so she settles back against the counter and takes a sip of coffee. It’s dark, thick with heavy cream and sugar. The way she always makes it.

Lydia adjust her jeweled glasses, rings glinting in the light. “My niece is getting married.”

Joni pauses, coffee cup to her lips. Lydia doesn’t talk much about family. She thinks she’s _maybe _mentioned this niece before, but Joni can’t quite figure out where this line of conversation is going. And if there’s one thing Lydia does _not _do, it’s meander. Every conversation has a destination. Joni takes a stalling sip of coffee. “Oh, wow, congratulations.”

“Yes, very exciting.” Lydia smooths back some of her hair. It’s a rare sight to see any hairs out of place on her updo, a testament to all the work they’ve been doing today. “Very involved.” Lydia clicks her pen on her pad, straightening back up to survey the shop. “I’m helping her plan. Her mother isn’t much use in that regard.”

“Stressful.”

“Most certainly.” Lydia turns to face her full on. Joni nearly flinches from the intensity of her gaze. “What are your rates?”

Joni blinks at her. “My rates?”

“For your flowers.”

Joni’s whole body softens. Whatever she’d been expecting, _this _was certainly not it. Something inside her cries out, joyful. And then a sharp pang of “Oh, uh, how did you know that…I…um, do flowers?”

Lydia scoffs, her hands still a flutter of hummingbird movement. Stacking books and piling receipts. “Oh, please. No need to play coy. I found your website. I’m not that old.”

“Oh, well, I mean…I haven’t done an order in like…nine months.”

Lydia fixes her with a hard look. “Did you lose all your talent in those nine months?” Joni gapes at her. “What are your rates?”

Joni pauses then she reaches for a pad of paper beside the register, heart pounding. She tries to remember how she used to do this, what questions she would ask. She finds, shockingly, that it is second nature. “Depends on what she wants. And if she wants flowers that are in season.” She sketches out the lay of the greenhouse in her mind. “I can do out of season flowers, but they’re pricier and I need more notice.”

“Noted. I’ll inquire about the specifics, but I know that, as of right now, she needs a bouquet, flowers for her ten bridesmaids. Centerpieces for around 200 guests, garlands, and a large floral statement piece on the cake table..”

Joni’s pen lingers over her pad, her brain chugging slowly, trying to process what Lydia’s just said. “That's…”

“A lot. Yes. My niece works in publishing. Quite lucrative. She’s certainly not hard up for cash and has a flair for the ostentatious.” Lydia waves her hand a little dismissively. “She has notions about flowers.”

Joni swallows hard, clicking her pen closed. “Listen, Lydia. I’m not like hard up. You don’t have to hire me just because-“

Lydia holds a single jeweled finger up to silence her. “Make no mistake, Joni, I’ve never done a thing for you out of pity or obligation. Nor will I. My niece’s wedding is the most important event in her life the way she tells it and you’re the best for the job. Besides,” She smiles slyly, “judging by all the floral arrangement books you’ve squirreled away in the backroom on your lunch break, I imagine that, if anything, these nine months have been refining.”

Joni’s not sure she’s ever seen this place so busy. Every table in the restaurant is full. The old man ducks in and out of the kitchen at an almost frantic pace, bringing out tea and bringing back armfuls of dishes picked clean of food. Joni likes the hum of activity, likes the distraction.

“So you got a job?” Leah asks between slurps of noodles. She’s got some specks of broth dotting her smock.

“A gig.” Joni corrects, plopping a piece of fried tofu into her mouth, the sauce savory sweet.

“Sure, but I mean it’s a floral arranging gig. It’s what you’ve been trying to do.” Leah takes a quick sip of tea before digging back into her noodles, the dark, caramelly sauce staining the ends of her chopsticks.

“I mean my boss is the one who hired me, so like I don’t know if it’s _that _much of an accomplishment.” She’s talking out of her ass now, just trying to fill the space between them. Her brain’s still chewing on what she actually wants to say.

“At the bookstore?” Joni nods. “I mean, so?” Leah eats another mouthful of noodles. “That’s great.”

Joni settles back against the rubbery plasticky fabric of the booth and takes a sip of her beer. It’s icy, the bubbles tickling her throat on the way down. She sighs. “It’s actually kind of a big deal.” Leah raises an eyebrow. “I looked her up, Lydia’s niece, and she’s like a big fucking deal. There’s gonna be like…famous people at the wedding.”

Leah sits up a little straighter. “Whoa.”

“Yeah. And I mean even if everyone there hates my flowers and I get absolutely zero exposure,” Joni finds her voice breaking, finds herself trembling just slightly, “they’re gonna pay me like ten grand.”

Leah’s chopsticks clatter to the table, her jaw slack. “What?”

“It’s huge. Like a huge amount of flowers, a huge amount of potential. It could be like…I don’t know. It could be really big for me.” Joni reaches up to brush a stray tear from under her eye and Leah frowns.

“Wait, this is amazing, why are you crying?” Joni shrugs, more tears falling now. Leah reaches over to take her hand, voice soft. “Are those happy tears?”

“No.” She squeezes. Joni takes a shuddering breath. “I think I’m gonna move back to the Valley.”

Leah releases her hand, rocking back at a little. She narrows her eyes and Joni can tell that Leah is trying to parse out what’s happening, where all of this is coming from. “I mean that’s….that’s great.” She cocks her head, a sly smile on her lips. “Neighbors again, huh?” She tries out a smile. “Ride or die?” Joni nods, tears still pouring down her cheeks. “I mean that’s great, that’s…” Then it dawns on her. Leah gulps. “Oh. _Oh_ fuck, What about Sebastian?”

Joni heaves, crying for real now, crying loudly. A few people at the tables beside them look up to find the source of the noise. “I don’t know, I don’t know.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading <3


	45. Peachpit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Faced with a decision, Sebastian panics. Until he doesn't.

“I feel out of place.”

Sebastian glances over, finds that he’s not the only one looking at Joni. Several of the other men meandering around the veranda are looking at her too. He can’t blame them, even as he moves to shield her a little from their prying eyes. Joni, for her part, doesn’t seem to have noticed them, looking instead a little dreamily out at the bay.

He’d bought her the dress she’s wearing. They’d gone together to a department store at the center of the financial district, both feeling a little like children playacting as adults. It’s silk and skims loosely over the curves of her body, its hem falling just above her knees. It’s the color of sunflowers and makes her hair look especially golden, makes her skin, tan despite their long, cold winter, almost shimmer. Her hair is pulled up at the nape of her neck, clasped in one of the jeweled combs they’d found in the farmhouse’s shed, stray pieces curling elegantly around her neck. When she turns, he finds a darkness in her eyes that surprises him. That reminds him so brilliantly of that first morning he’d ever seen her up close, at the flower dance. Yoba, years ago now. Sebastian tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear. He wants to ask her what’s wrong, but the crowd around them is chattering away and it doesn’t feel like the right place or the right time. Maybe she is, just like him, still processing all of this. He takes her hand in his, presses a kiss to each knuckle. Her eyes churn. A softness tinged with sadness. “Well, you certainly don’t look out of place.” She scoffs, smiling a little and looks back out at the crowd around them. It was a risk coming here. To this party. A risk that Aaron very carefully calculated, but a risk all the same.

They have one interested venture capitalist whose footed enough money for the two fo them to rent a couple rooms in a small office building on the outskirts of the financial district and the heavy-duty computing equipment Sebastian needs to get the damn thing off the ground, but they need more. They need a marketing budget, they need business cards. They need people, exposure, all the strange minutiae of business that Sebastian is now forced to try and understand. And so here he is, in the first tailored suit he’s ever owned, pretending like just being here, at a country club on the North side of the city, isn’t throwing him absolutely for a loop. He feels _particularly_ downhome here, his accent like a nervous tick laid of honey thick, but tries not to let that get the best of him. It’s amazing that they’re here at all.

Aaron got the appropriate above ground chatter going while Sebastian worked to curry interest on forums, enough to get them an invite to this, one of the biggest industry events of the year. And it’s gone well so far. He hasn’t really needed to do the talking. That’ what Aaron is for. All he needs is to be able to answer the tough tech questions and seem, in a word, capable. Which, he assures himself, is something he can do. It’s easier with Joni by his side.

He hadn’t forgotten exactly how easy and charming she can be, but watching her make small talk with people who have, just by the nature of their clothes, absolutely terrified him is a good reminder. A reminder still that she might be the best, most interesting thing about him. So that sudden wavering anxiety he feels wafting off her now that they’re winding down out on the veranda seems to come straight out of the blue. He raises her hand to his lips again and presses a kiss to her palm. Joni curls her fingers and pulls her hand away. The movement, small as it is, sends ripples through him. He watches her swallow hard, he watches her eyes go even darker. “We can leave.” He says quietly.

She looks up at him, almost startled. “Why would we leave?” Sebastian winds around across the veranda until they’re a little further from the rest of the crowd. It’s evening now and out here at the country club, there are no buildings to obscure the way the sun is spreading like a cracked yolk along the horizon. Cool, salty air comes off the bay, tinged just a little with the smells of the city. Sebastian grimaces at the scent. He’s about to tell her that they really can leave, that the event is practically over, when Joni takes a few steps back. Her voice gets a little loud, a little uneven “This is just it, right?” She seems to be wavering, her smile trembling. “This is your everything.” He watches her throat constrict as she swallows hard. “You’ve made it. And I’m so proud of you.” There’s a lilt to her voice, an almost hysterical shake.

He frowns. “Joni, what’s going on?” She smiles the biggest, most beautiful smile and he knows immediately that something is horribly, horribly wrong by the way it doesn’t reach her eyes. His stomach drops. He reaches for her but she dodges him. “_Joni._”

She shakes her head, turning away from him, heading back toward the country club. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

He waits, glass of wine in hand. Dutifully. Patiently. Perhaps for longer than he should. He watches the sun slip into the water and then he can’t stand it anymore. His walk to the bathroom is more like a run.

He slips into the bathroom, jimmying the door behind him so no one else can follow, and finds Joni perched like a little bird on the edge of the sink. “There you are. What’s going on?” She shakes her head and he can see tears wetting her cheeks. She won’t look at him. “_Joni _what’s going on?” She says nothing, just shakes her head. He knows she does that when she’s worried that her voice will crack, worried that she’ll start crying and he wracks his brain to try and figure out what could have possibly happened. She’d been quiet the past couple of days, sure, now that he’s thinking about it. A little short on the phone, sort of brief in person. He’d tried the morning before to slip his hand between her legs, to feel her cum hard around his fingers but she’d brushed him off. He should have thought more about it, but he’d been busy, and worried, and nervous about this event and had thought…well, he hadn’t thought at all and now that idea that something awful has happened crashes into him. His voice is heavy when he speaks next. “What’s going on?”

Finally, _finally, _Joni looks up at him. And with an effort so great her voice cracks, says. “I’m moving.”

Sebastian narrows his eyes. He takes a few steps toward her. “I…know. I figured you’d have to get a new place once Leah leaves,” he looks sheepishly off the one side, “I mean I sort of figured you’d move in with me. It would be easy, it would be-“

She makes a noise that’s halfway between a sob and a cry and his blood freezes in his veins. “I’m moving back to the Valley.”

Sebastian blinks at her. “_You’re…_”

The rest comes out in a jumble. “Shane’s renting out one of the artist’s cabins down by the river.” She inhales sharply. “I’m moving back into the farmhouse. I’m starting my business again. I…I…” she trails off, holding herself tightly. She looks at the wall, at the ground. She looks anywhere but at him.

Sebastian falls quiet. His thoughts have slowed to a stop. It’s like a puzzle. Like a particularly fussy line of code. He’s trying to wrestle his way through what she’s just said and the silence between them stretches long. Too long, because before he can formulate even a stalling reply, Joni looks up at him with the most stricken look he’s ever seen on his face. And then, before he can reach out and grab hold of her, she slips past him and out back into the hall.

It’s only when the door shuts, when the bathroom goes quiet that the full force of what she’s just said hit him, the full reality of what he didn’t say.

Sebastian nearly slams into Aaron on his way through the club. He’s undone his tie a little but, balancing a martini in each hand. He’s the same expression Sebastian saw the very first night they met. Relaxed, a little cocky. Sebastian’s sure Aaron must have good news. He doesn’t give a shit. Not now that he can’t see Joni anywhere in the room. “You’re in a hurry.” Aaron sways a little as he speaks, voice sultry and booze-soaked.

Sebastian rakes his hands through his hair. “Did you see Joni?”

Aaron leans back a little, wobbles his head. “Yeah. Saw her about a minute ago. Hurrying toward the exit.” He leans a little closer, lowering his voice to a teasing rumble. “This some kind of elaborate foreplay.” Sebastian fixes him with a look that seems to immediately sober him up. He straightens up, brushing the lapel of his jacket. “Shit. Everything okay.”

The ground feels like it’s slipping out from under him. He can’t lose her again, _not again_. His heart is beating so loudly he can barely hear his own thoughts. Sebastian swallows hard. His hands are shaking when he takes Aaron by the shoulders. “I can work remotely right.”

Aaron looks at him cockeyed. “Of course. We talked about this”

Sebastian can barely stand still, the energy coiled inside of him buzzing now. “I mean _really_ remotely.”

Aaron frowns. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m moving.” Sebastian is already skirting around him when Aaron replies.

“What? To where?” 

“Home.” He calls over his shoulder. Sebastian breaks into a run.

Sebastian doubts Joni will head home. When she’s worked up like this she almost never does. He knows that she will either head to the bookstore or the Chinese restaurant and considering how ferociously his own stomach is growling he picks the Chinese restaurant. She’s got a head start so he hails a cab and by the time the cab arrives she’s just made it the sidewalk, dress a little rumbled.. Funny how well they know each other, funny how in sync they are. It only makes the urgent feeling inside of him more intense. He throws a couple twenties onto the seat and races out onto the sidewalk.

She sees him, eyes widening, and raises her hands. “You don’t need to apologize. We don’t need to talk about it. I understand. I know it was too much to ask, I know-“

He kisses her. He kisses her like her lips are the only thing keeping him alive, like they are the only thing in the whole world. He holds her so tightly, holds her so close, fingers tangled in her hair, the force of the kiss sending them both stumbling backward against the restaurant’s front windows. He comes up for air and finds himself trembling with the force of the tumult inside of him. Joni’s looking up at him with wide eyes, her lips are trembling too. “Did you really think,” he presses another kiss to her lips, fingers holding her face tightly, “after all this time,” another kiss, this one desperate, almost mournful “after everything that’s happened,” he rests his forehead against hers, “that I wouldn’t go with you.” He feels Joni soften in his arms, feels her tight grip on him loosen. He feels the breath of her exhale. Tears are forming when she looks up at him again. “I would burn this whole city down for you.”

“_Sebastian_.”

“I will follow you to the ends of the earth. And I will _never_ make the same mistake again.” He’s breathing hard, raggedly. “So if you tell me we’re moving to a dumpster on 42nd street, I’ll pack my bags.” She reaches up to cup his face. He feels her tracing the line of his cheekbones. “I’d go anywhere with you. _Anywhere._” She sighs on a laugh, a few tears still rolling wet down her cheeks. She smiles and then she looks at him and he’s sure he’s never seen her so beautiful. And then she shakes her head, wiping furiously at her cheeks. “What?” She shakes her head again and he cups her face tighter “_what?_”

Her voice is quiet, but firm. “I don’t want to stand in the way of your dreams. _Ever._ I would rather…” she wavers, lip trembling, then looks up at him, eyes burning. “I won’t let myself be the reason you abandon what you’ve worked so hard for.”

Sebastian presses his forehead to hers. “_You _are my dream.” He can feel her hesitate and holds her tighter. “You are. Everything else I can figure out, but without you, I have nothing.” Slowly, quietly, she slides her arms up around his neck, pulling him down closer to her. He rests his chin on the crown of her head and they both release a long breath. He feels, with his arms wrapped around her, the safest he’s ever felt in all his life. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3.  
We are so, so close to the end and I just want to say how grateful I am for all of you.


	46. Elliot

She has bits of packing peanut under her fingernails and the sort of waxy residue that newsprint leaves all over her fingers. Her nose is full of dust, so dry it’s running a little. And she is filled, almost to the brim, with joy.

They’d spent the better part of their morning packing up the apartment, Goose watching like a sentry from the kitchen counter. It hadn’t taken all that much time which had felt…strange. Like Zuzu had always been impermanent, like they’d always just been passing through. Lydia had been wholly unsurprised when Joni called her to let her know was quitting. _Don’t forget to get the books you left in the backroom, _she’d said absently into the phone, _and I’ll see you at the wedding in a month. _And according to Leah, she hadn’t even had to tell Rita it was over. The two just drifted quietly away from each other. It feels a little melancholy, but goodbyes always have. Even the good ones.

So yes, Their apartment’s packed. Sebastian’s too, though he hadn’t had much to pack when they really got down to it. Just a few bits of furniture, he cd collection, his books. He rode his bike out to the Valley this morning. Called about halfway through the drive from that gas station they always stop at, to laugh about the rain. Torrents and torrents had come off the Valley, soaking him to his boots. The rain arrived in Zuzu a few hours later and when Sebastian called from Robin’s phone to let Joni know he made it alright, it was coming down in sheets. She could hear the chirping of birds over the line, the sound of Robin’s laughter. She could almost smell the raw wood, the savory scent of whatever Demetrius has going on the stove. He’ll be driving back with Robin’s truck to put all their boxes in. Should be back in Zuzu before nightfall in he drives hard. They’ll leave just before the sun comes up.

Aaron went with him. No comment about how he’d faired in the sudden downpour but Joni can wager a guess. He’d been a little shell-shocked at the news of Sebastian’s move, but as it turns out having two addresses for your business actually adds an air of importance so he’d been easily placated. Not like he’s had much of a choice. Sebastian had told him in no uncertain terms that he was moving and that was that. The faintest guilt warring with excitement, with a warm feeling so intense she could reach out and wrap herself up in it. The door dings, pulling her out of her thoughts. She has two Joja Cola’s tucked under her arm and has somehow, unconsciously, found her way to the candy aisle.

Joni’s here, ostensibly, to get snacks for the road, but what she’s really trying to do is say goodbye to a bodega that saw her through her fair share of tears, of long, sleepless night where it felt like her life had run away from her. Sometimes the places and things are harder to say goodbye to than the people and a pang of nostalgia settles in her chest. She runs her hands along the cool metal of the shelves and says so long. But for once in her life it doesn’t feel like an ending, isn’t tinged with that melancholy. Because she can always come back. And the memories here were made with people. And the people are coming with her.

Everything feels _right _and _good _and _easy _and so it’s only right then, only fair in the universe’s sick idea of balance, that she should see him here. She feels him before she sees him. Like a prick in the air. The fear that rises up inside her is quieter than it’s been, but it’s been a long time since she’s felt it and one hand rises unconsciously to her chest, her thumb rubbing soothing circles over her skin. Joni turns, slowly, and finds him at the register. Elliot. Buying two bruised apples and a water. Her feel coalesces, sharpens, and then it fades into nothing and takes a look at him. A real look.

His hair looks dull, a faded red, greasy at the temples like he hasn’t washed it in a while. That coat that she would always see him in, even in the heat of summer, looks tattered, faded too. He’s talking to the cashier with that same smug look on his face as when he’d taken her phone off the hook, but it’s brutally obvious that the cashier could not give less a shit about what he’s saying. Obvious including, it seems, to Elliot, because when he turns, his purchases in hand, his face falls, lips almost trembling. Elliot looks like a loser. He looks old and sad and washed up and she feels pity for him. And anger. But the anger dissipates. Joni doesn’t have much use for it now. She watches as he exits the store. He darts around, looking in all directions, scratching nervously at his scalp.

Lydia told her, before Joni left, that she’d heard the book had been taken out of most bookstores in town. Plagiarism she’d said. He’d taken passages straight out of Fowle’s _The Collector. _And the parts he hadn’t stolen weren’t that good anyway. At the time, Joni had barely been listening. Any mention of the book would send her heart racing, but now, now as she looks at him, she can see the weight of that on his shoulders. He looks again around the store, flinching a little as he does, like he’s expecting someone to come out of the shadows.

He looks sad and fearful and very, very alone and she realizes, as he looks back at the cashier, that maybe bodega clerks are the only people he talks to, the only people who even pretend to listen. 

Leah pops her head out of an aisle. “You okay?”

Joni jumps. “Yoba! Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

Leah laughs. “Of course, I am. Why wouldn’t I?” She cocks her head. “You just stopped talking is all”

Joni blinks. She looks back to see that Elliot has disappeared. There’s a quiet fear still simmering inside of her. She can remember that night as clear as if it had happened yesterday. Still sometimes finds herself reaching up to touch the faint scar just above her eyebrow. But she can sleep in the dark again, can answer the phone. There are weeks, months, where she doesn’t think about it. Joni doesn’t dream about it anymore. She turns back to Leah and smiles. “Yeah sorry, just thinking.”

Leah taps her playfully on her forehead. “You’re always so in your head.” Leah ducks back around the corner of the aisle, calls out that she’s getting a couple bags of chips but that Sebastian’s gonna have to fight her if he wants some.

Joni looks again out the window where Elliot had been standing. It’s profoundly empty. A sullen looking teenager passes by the window where he’d been standing, passes through the residue of him. Like he’d been a ghost. He is a ghost. And Joni lets him go. Lets the pieces of him that haven’t lodged themselves into her memories leave. Lets them follow him down the damp street to whatever small, lonely place he lives now. The pieces that remain are quiet, drowned out by the noise of the rest of her life. She is living in the sun and he under the weight of what he’s done, whether he knows it or not. He pulled the shadows over himself. Joni drums her nails against one of the shelves. And then she turns back to find Leah.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I won't lie to you guys, I fought about this a lot in my head. There was a part of me that wanted Elliot to just get his ass kicked and his life ruined by Sebastian or Joni or Leah. But I think I decided it was more important to me for Joni not to have that kind of perfect closure and justice and still be able to live well without it. At the end of the day, Elliot ruined his own life. 
> 
> But, that being said, I more than welcome your completely justified frustration and rage lol. 
> 
> Just one more chapter. I can't believe it. You guys are so amazing. Thank you so much sticking with me and for continuing to read <3.


	47. Two Ends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s my birthday and it’s almost a full year since I started posting this story so what a fitting time to end it. To say that it’s changed my life would be a very silly understatement. You guys have given me the confidence to pursue my writing outside of fan fiction and for that, I am eternally grateful. You really all mean so much to me. I hope this ending does Joni and Sebastian justice. 

Sebastian looks funny in a tux. His dark curls just a little too messy to be prim and proper, his twang just a little too heavy as he sings along to the radio. He looks good in it though. Especially with the way he’s got it mostly unbuttoned, the smooth, hard lines of his chest glistening in the late afternoon sun, a dusting of dark hair descending down toward his navel. He’s rolled up the sleeves, revealing the dark lines of his tattoos. He got a new one just before they left Zuzu. Tim did it on her bare mattress, the goodbye party they’d thrown raging out in their empty apartment. A fish no longer than her pointer finger, curling along his forearm. Its fins long and lacy like the fish her grandfather mounted on the wall, the very first thing she saw when she walked into the farmhouse. She wonders if that’s what it’s supposed to be or if it’s just something he dreamt up. She wonders if it makes any difference at all. But nor for long, because a warm summer breeze comes filtering through the truck’s open windows – ruffling his hair, the undone ends of his bowtie, the silken hem of her dress – and all her thoughts slip easily away.

Joni reaches over to take one of his curls around her finger, watches as one side of his mouth ticks up. He reaches over and takes her hand, pressing her palm to his lips. “You did good.”

She settles a little closer to him on the bench seat, pulling her legs up to cross them, the worn material of the seat scratchy against her bare legs. “You think?”

Sebastian laughs. “Are you kidding me? It was incredible.” He flips her hand, kisses across her knuckles. 

Joni smiles, letting her body relax back into the seat. The light is golden as it filters through the trees onto the open highway. It’s warm on her skin, a soft, building heat like slipping into a bath. She squeezes his fingers. “Thanks for your help.”

He glances over at her, face breaking into a wide smile. She forgets sometimes that these are mostly for her. That the rest of the world just gets his light, half-smirk. “Always.” He lifts her hand again, pressing another kiss to the back of it before releasing it. Sebastian turns the radio a little up, resumes his quiet singing.

Joni smiles and lets her eyes flutter closed, lets her whole body relax. It had been a packed couple of days. A sleepless night the night before and a morning so rushed it’s a just blur of color.

Lydia’s niece’s wedding had been a forest of flowers. Flowers on her dress, in her hair, all down the aisle, all through the reception hall. All Joni’s. Shane had done most of the backend help. Organizing seeds, babying buds, helping her clean and split the stems. But it was Sebastian who’d stayed up with her, helping keep the stems watered, dutifully arranging them just how she told him to. And it had been Sebastian who held her tightly when she’d stumbled out of the truck on the way to the wedding, panic-stricken and so full of self-doubt she’d nearly turned around and gone home.

And it had been, all of it, an unequivocal, resounding success. Sebastian and Joni had lurked on the periphery, sipping champagne so crisp and fruity it went down like water, watching as the black-tie crowd admired her flowers.

The governor’s daughter had been in attendance, a heavy glittering rock on her ring finger. She’d asked for a business card, Sebastian’s eyes widening from behind her at the request, and when Joni had to sheepishly admit that she didn’t have any, the woman forced her to write her information down on a napkin. _I’m getting married in September, _she’d said looming over Joni at the dessert table, _and I need flowers like this. _Joni’s hands had shaken as she wrote down her phone number, excitement and terror threatening to spill over until she’d felt Sebastian’s hand softly on the small of her back, his thumb rubbing smooth circles through the fabric of her dress.

She looks over at him now, smiles at the way the sun outlines his features. She watches as he lights a cigarette, blows smoke out of one side of his mouth. It curls around his long, slender fingers, up over the shape of his aquiline nose. Joni smiles and leans forward, reaching for the glove box. She scoots Robin’s plastic bag of cassettes over to retrieve the seed catalog she’d brought along to read for the ride. She hadn’t done much of that on the way up. Too nervous, tittering anxiously to Sebastian about anything and everything. But now, in the slow sunlight of a summer afternoon, an almost primordial calm settling over her, Joni sets it on her lap and flips it open.

She’d found the thick catalog stuffed in her mailbox on their third morning back, a simple, messy note from Pierre laid on top. _Welcome Home. _

It’s made of sturdy paper, the seed varieties rendered in full, beautiful color. _I can order any kind you like, _Pierre told her when she’d stopped by the next morning to pick up some milk, _with my purveyor’s discount they’ll be pennies per seed. _Leah, standing beside her, bag of chips in hand, could barely believe it. _What happened to him, huh? _She’d asked as they headed back down the dirt path toward the farmhouse._ When did he become a little socialist? _

Joni smiles at the memory. She’ll have to call Leah when they get back to the farm. She’s bringing over a big pot of curry tonight, needs some tomatoes to finish it up. Shane picked an heirloom variety that’s absolutely taken off across the patch. They’re a kaleidoscope of red and green with ridges like pumpkins. A beautiful menace. They’ve been eating tomatoes for weeks.

Joni pages through the book as they take the wide exit toward the Valley. The song changes on the radio, Sebastian taps his palm on the steering wheel in time with the beat. She skips back to the flowers, running her fingers over the matte photographs. A spray of pale color, cream and pinky yarrow blossoms; pale lavender ageratum, their petals like anemone; coral and white spotted lengths of balsam; citrus colored back eyed susans; dusky bronze calendula; champagne-colored majorettes.

She can imagine her greenhouse awash with them, the dense humidity rolling over her when she enters, the thick floral scent of all of them melding together. She lets her head droop, resting it on Sebastian’s arm. She curls around him, sighing contentedly when he rests his hand on her knee. The song on the radio’s a little twangy, Sebastian’s voice is a soft croon just slightly off-key. The truck rumbles along. Joni drifts off, the book heavy in her lap.

The mountains come into view first. She sees them through her heavy lids, sleep still clinging to her. Pines sloping down onto craggy rock, the rest of the Valley hidden like a little gem as they crest over the top of the dusty, two-lane highway. Just the faintest hint of the top of Robin’s roof poking up through the treetops. Sebastian winds the truck around it, heading toward town. He slows as they pull in past the clinic. Maru’s outside, kicking around in her scrubs as she sips a joja cola. She waves as they crawl past. Sebastian waves back, yelling something Joni can’t quite hear out the window. She sits up, rubbing at her eyes. The square is in full bloom, the dense green leaves of the oaks and maples along the street shiver in the warm breeze. Joni spots the meticulous rows of green beans growing over in the community garden. Evelyn’s kingdom. Still as neat and orderly as the first day Joni ever set foot in town, but now a swirling wooden sculpture stands guard the entrance. One of Leah’s pieces, but not the only sculpture in the square. There’s an enormous metal wind chime off over by the Saloon, its soft, jingly soft wafting across the town with the breeze. One of the other artists made it. There’s a whole host of them living down by the river now. Every cabin full, a waiting list of nearly six months. Mostly thanks to Leah’s outreach. Lewis dipped into town funds to hire her on, expand the artist’s colony. It’s bloomed. “Sleep good?” Sebastian asks, reaching over to muss her hair.

Joni smiles dreamily. “Actually, yeah. Believe it or not.”

“You probably needed it. Had a long night.”

She raises an eyebrow at him. “So did you.”

He chuckles. “I’m used to it.” Joni rolls her eyes, laughing. His skin is warm to the touch. She presses her palm to his chest, feels his heart beat steady against it. 

* * *

The first thing Sebastian takes off is his shoes. He hasn’t had to wear dress shoes like this since prom. Not that he’d stayed long at that particular school event. Slipped out the gymnasium’s back door after the second song to smoke weed in his car, fool around with the pretty girl he’d convinced to come with him. Funny how things change. He glances up at Joni, her dress low on her back, the satin rounding out over her firm ass. And funny how some things don’t.

He still sort of can’t believe it. That this living, breathing ray of sunshine, this incredible, dauntless human being has agreed to spend her beautiful life with him. It feels sometimes, when he wakes up beside her in the morning, sunlight spilling over their bed, like a very, very fantastical dream. And as he settles down on the couch to peel off his socks, he watches her flit around the house, memorizing every little movement, on the off, horrible chance that it is.

She’s tittering on about the party they’re having tonight. He knows she’s trying to burn some of the nervous energy from the wedding, so he just lets her. Lets her talk in circles about Demetrius’ melon jam. How she’s sure they won’t have enough. How she didn’t think to ask when Evelyn was planning on coming home from temple, not sure now when she should head over to pick up the baguettes and strawberry cake she’d asked her to make for the party. She slips off her dangling earrings, leaves them on the back of the couch. The movement draws his eyes up along her arms, a little more muscular now that she’s been back on the farm, across the smooth line of her collarbone. She moves closer to him, rolling her shoulders to ease some of the tension he knows she’s been holding there. They’ve both had long days. He watches as she bends down to undo the straps on her heels, rakes his eyes up her long legs. She’s saying something about picking up cheese from Pierre’s. but Sebastian’s having trouble following, can’t really stop looking at the bronze of her skin, can’t stop imagining dragging his lips up her legs, settling between them, finding the warmest part of her. 

He catches her by the hips, pulling her down onto his lap, smiling at her surprised yelp, the way it descends into laughter. Pressing a soft kiss to each side of her collarbone, he runs his hands up her arms, warming them, her skin chilled even in the heat of summer. Sebastian breathes into the shell of her ear. “I don’t care about all that.” He kisses between her breasts. “The only thing I want to eat is you.”

Joni laughs, delighted, and swats him playfully away. “Corny.”

“Oh yeah?” His fingers brush the thin straps of her dress from her shoulders. He finds her nipples hard, runs his thumbs along that pebbled skin, softly canting his hips when she moans at the touch. He presses a kiss to the hollow of her throat, feels her fingers curl around the nape of his neck, pulling his chin up to kiss her on the lips.

When she breaks away, the air shifts. She strokes her thumbs behind his ears, looking down at him, her eyes serious. She takes her bottom lip between her teeth and he’s about to ask her what’s wrong when she kisses him again. “I love you,” she breathes against his lips, “so much I don’t know what to do with you sometimes.”

Warmth blooms across his chest, spreading all through the rest of his body. He holds her tighter. “I love you too.” His fingers release, hunting up her thighs. His smooths his thumbs along the elastic of her underwear. “Can I show you how much?”

She exhales his name on the first thrust, her thighs shivering around his hips. She drapes herself over him, one hand holding tightly onto his shoulder_. _He stays shallow. Just rocking against her, holding her tightly to him until there’s barely a spot on their bodies not touching. A bird calls from beyond the window. The warm breeze drifts over them. Joni’s moans are the sweetest thing he’s heard in his life.

Sebastian can still taste her on his tongue as he pads across the house toward the kitchen. He can hear the shower running, hear the bright tempo of whatever cd she’s got in the stereo. He passes the mounted fish, the old painting of a ship tossing at sea. There’s a new piece on the mantel above the fireplace. A bronze cast of a woman, nude, her body twisting, hair flying around her head, head resting almost dreamily on her hand, undisturbed despite the motion in her body. A parting gift from Lydia that she’d slipped into the truck Joni stopped in to say goodbye. Sebastian suspects, though he would never say as much, that it’s supposed to be Joni.

He pads into the kitchen and puts a pot on the stove, rummaging in the cabinets for his coffee. The air in the room is thick, smells faintly of sawdust. He glances over at the stairwell. They still need to put finish on the wood, but it’s standing now, leads to an actual second floor. His mom had done most of the initial construction, but Sebastian hired out contractors to handle the plumbing and the roof. They’ll be finished completely in a few weeks. Sebastian pours the boiling water over the filter, the rich scent of coffee filling the room.

He’s paying for the renovations and it feels…well, he’s not sure how it feels, but there are mornings where he’ll just stare at the work, pride blooming in his chest. The company’s taken off. Bigger and harder and faster than either he or Aaron expected. Or were wholly prepared for. Sebastian can feel the effects of those late nights in his neck muscles, can see them in his astronomical phone bill. Zuzu is, technically, long distance.

Marianne sent him an email a few weeks ago. Polite, jarringly professional. Congratulating him on his success. It had been a very specific pleasure to delete it.

So he’s got money now. Nothing crazy, but enough. More money, at least, than he ever would have made under Marianne’s thumb. The renovations then had been an obvious choice. At least to him. Joni had balked at first, telling him it was too much money for him to spend on her. _On us, _he’d corrected, nodding back toward his makeshift office in the front room. It was, he told her, the very least he could do. After everything.

They’ll have a lot more space soon. For books and flowers pots and Yoba knows what else. He hears Joni step out of the shower and reaches up to get her a mug too.

She’s in a little slip of a dress at the far end of the table. A gossamer thing. He can see the outline of her nipples through the fabric, lust coiling again in his gut. But dissipating quickly when Tim slaps him hard on the back. “Hell of a place you’ve got here.” Sebastian smiles, lifting his beer so they can clank them together. “Now tell me. How’d you convince a girl like that to let an asshole like you stick around?”

Sebastian chuckles, taking a sip of beer. “Hell if I know.” Tim laughs that deep, carefree laugh of his and starts to make his way down the table. It looks like, if Sebastian’s gauging it right, Tim is making a beeline for Emily.

Aaron snorts from beside him when Tim’s out of earshot. “Wasn’t he the one who convinced you to leave her in the first place?”

Sebastian laughs quietly, leaning on his hand to face his friend. It’s a dull pain now, that memory, faded almost into nothingness. “Tim never was great with decision making.” Aaron chortles. He takes a long sip of his wine then leans toward the charcuterie platter, fingers dancing over the selection. The table’s heavy with food. Joni bought a lot just on her own, but everyone else brought something too. And they really have invited a whole army. People from the city, from the Valley. Even Sam and Abigail have forgiven him enough to show. Abigail wrapping him in a bear hug when she arrived, Sam knocking him just a little too hard in the arm. They look older. Both of them.

Sam’s over by the tomato patch, tossing a ball back and forth with Shane. Sebastian spots Beth sitting nearby, she’s hollering something at Shane that’s made him blush from his neck to his temples. Sebastian smiles into his beer and turns back to the table, back to Joni. The brooch in her mess of waves was her mother’s. It catches the light as she moves. An enormous flower all in peach-colored rhinestone. Joni smiles, her whole face lighting up. Someone’s told her something funny and her laugh carries across the table. Leah smiles wryly beside her. They are, still, attached at the hip. Every so often they will lean over and whisper things to each other. Always in their own world. Set apart, just the two of them. He feels honored to have a glimpse of it. 

A breeze wafts over the table, rustling the string lights and the patchwork tablecloth. A brief hush falls over the table at it before the chatter rises up again. It’s still summer but the air has the slight crispness of fall, a few of the leaves showing their color just at the edges. The table is bustling, talking and laughter, but Sebastian just sits, sipping his beer, taking it all in. He spots Goose prowling around the table. The cat, noticing him, pads over, swiping a little at his beer, rubbing the top of his head on Sebastian’s arm. Sebastian offers up his lap, but the cat has other plans, heading back over to Joni with a swish of his tail. She smiles at him, ruffles behind his ears then takes a bite of a peach, running her lips along her fingers to collect the juice that’s rolled down them. He could watch her forever. Could watch her do anything. Anywhere. He wants to watch her grow old here under these trees. The thought feels like a wish, but the late summer air has a certain quality to it that makes it all feel possible. Assured even. It feels like their whole lives are opening up, possibility spinning endlessly forward. They could have kids. Yoba, they could have fucking kids if they wanted. They could have grandkids. They could spend the rest of their lives alone, just the two of them here on this farm, watching each other drink coffee from across the kitchen table and he thinks there might be nothing better in the whole world than that. He wants to be beside her when the night goes dark, wants to spend an eternity wrapped up in her. Of that, he has never been more sure. 

* * *

They’re sitting in the shadows of Shane’s peach trees, tall as oaks now, heavy with fruit. The air is floral, honeyed, just tinged with peach. A soft breeze skitters through the trees’ verdant leaves, bringing the scent closer. Joni reaches across the table to pick up a bit of goat cheese, soft between her fingers, then a glistening slice of peach. The juice runs down the side of her hand as she eats. She mouths it up, laughing as she does. Time feels like it’s crawling around them. Fireflies bobbing lazily through the pale darkness. The lights they’ve strung branch to branch over the table twinkle softly in the breeze. There’s a glow on the horizon from the summer sun, too stubborn to set completely. A little green, a little gold.

Joni exhales, her whole body settles back into her wicker chair. The stars blink softly above them, the sound of chatter all around fading away as she looks up. The moon is a round, yellow yolk, so warm and close she feels, a little wildly, that she could reach up and touch it. There’s a stillness inside of her. An ease that seems to stretch on and on. Beside her, Leah laughs. They’re so close their arms are touching, and Joni reaches over to squeeze her hand. Leah smiles at her, squeezing back, then leans over to whisper something into Abigail’s ear that makes her laugh so hard she nearly chokes on her beer. Joni takes a nip of frosting from one of Evelyn’s cakes and settles back again in her seat, lets her eyes flutter closed. The chatter gives way to the quiet hum of the cicadas, the soft swishing of the wind in the leaves.

She can feel her grandfather somewhere at the treeline close to the river, can almost see his wide, toothy grin. She can feel her mother lingering between the petals on the flowers all down the table. She feels them echo inside of her and she finds that her sadness has become something else, something a little brighter, and without really thinking, Joni opens her eyes and looks down the table at Sebastian. He’s lost in thought too, eyes soft and distant. The candles they’ve lit glisten against his olive skin, his hair so dark it looks almost blue in the low light. He is the most handsome man she has ever seen and her heart aches the sight of him. Sebastian catches her looking. He winks at her, smiling that wry mischievous smile she’d seen for the first time as he leaned over the pool table at the Saloon. Yoba that was a whole lifetime ago now. It still makes her blush. He raises his glass. She does too. The whole table follows in a chattery, uncoordinated toast. The scent of peonies wafts over the yard. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now, if you know anything about me at all, then you know that I can never leave something well enough alone. I don’t know when they’ll be posted (could be months honestly) but I do have several one-shots planned in this universe. Subscribe to the series if you want to be notified when I do end up posting them!   
And I wish you all the best of luck with your own reading and writing endeavors. Thanks for reading <3.


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